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Feds Reject Eolas Browser Plug-In Patent

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the surprise-turn-of-events dept.

theodp writes "The USPTO has issued a preliminary decision invalidating Eolas' claim to Web browser technology central to a case against Microsoft, which could save the software giant more than half a billion dollars in damages. If upheld, this also means Microsoft will not be required to make changes that would have crippled IE's ability to work with plug-ins like QuickTime and Flash. Eolas has 60 days to respond to the decision. The USPTO has only invalidated 151 patents out of nearly 4 million patents awarded since 1988."

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  1. Developer IE6 lead to multiple installed versions by starvingartist12 · · Score: 5, Informative

    This update was big news for the web design community, for other reasons. The developer's edition of IE6 (which was a modified version that contained the pop-up) revealed that Windows was able to run multiple Internet Explorer versions simultaneously by merely adding a blank text file!.

    For the longest time, people thought it was impossible to run multiple versions of IE on the same machine to do testing on various browsers. It was a huge pain, and it also meant that developers were forced to use the IE version that came with the OS and not downgrade, while Netscape 4.xx to Mozilla installed fine. But now, it's possible to run IE3, IE4, IE5.01, IE5.5 SP2 and IE6 side-by-side (screenshot).