Slashdot Mirror
Two Strikes for Eolas Plug-In Patent
theodp writes "The USPTO has handed Microsoft a second victory in a dispute over a browser plug-in patent that could roil the Web if upheld, rejecting arguments by Eolas and the University of California that technologies cited as prior art by Microsoft and its W3C allies that persuaded the USPTO to open a reexam were irrelevant. Separately, Microsoft is attacking Eolas and the UC on a second front, asking the U.S. Court of Appeals to overturn a $565 million judgment, this time based on prior art that's completely different than that which it urged the USPTO to consider and the W3C to stand behind."
GNAA Announces Victory over Apple Community
..."
San Francisco, California - Just three days after being the first in
the world to leak photos of Apple's upcoming revision to MacOS X, version 10.4,
Steve Jobs announced to the world facts about the new Operating System
consistent with information leaked by elite GNAA operator Gary Niger and
prospective member Ron Delsner.
"We've pulled it off!", noted Niger during Jobs' announcement at Apple's
Worldwide Developers Conference. "The GNAA plan was clever from the start with
this one I think. When we received our leaked copy of the OS, we knew that by
releasing only partial information and some screenshots, the association people
would make with the GNAA would lead them to believe the screenshots were fake.
Now that Steve 'Rim' Jobs has verified everything we leaked, we have managed to
fool the entire Mac community. In essense, a few hundred thousand people have
been trolled, a few hundred thousand people have lost. Though I do wish they
have a nice day"
"I don't think it could have worked out any better; Every single one of the
features shown in our screenshots, particularly Dashboard, which everybody
called as fake, was demoed by Jobs. This is my revenge for being beat up on the
rent", quoted Ron Delsner on being approached by reporters. "I've been wanting
to join the Gay Nigger Association of America for quite some time, and knew
that I help pull off something big if they were to let me in."
Delsner was right, as upon hearing this, Gary Niger immediately produced a vial
of what he called the "Holy Gay Nigger Seed" from his front pocket, and asked
Ron to kneel, at which time the Seed was poured upon Ron's head, making him an
official member of the GNAA. Noticing the television cameras present in the
press room, Gary cited that this was in fact the first televised induction of a
member into the GNAA.
"But back to the troll", Niger said quickly after. "I had a sneaking suspicion
that the homosexual caucasians of the Mac community would feel threatened by
the GNAA's massive nigger cocks and immediately cast doubts upon any
screenshots we produced for them. I saw this as an opportunity to troll
hundreds of thousands of people. It just goes to show that GNAA is greater than
j00, and that fristage postage is mine."
And Niger certainly did not fail it, as can be seen from the following excerpts
taken from various Internet website's covering the leak:
ThinkSecret.com - "In fact, it was the source that led many users to call the
shots fake; the information in that story, as well as this one, was provided by
Gary Niger and Ron Delsner of the GNAA, an organization that deals in
crapfloods and Slashdot trolling."
AppleInsider.com - "Enjoy the photoshop work. I seriously don't think Apple
would be so crazy to use those jargons."
MacRumors.com - "Hmm... Information by "Gary Niger" of GNAA. Sounds too stupid
to be true. And that dashboard thing? Hogwash me thinks
MacRumors.com - "I immediately thought of them when I saw "GNAA". Anyone who
reads Slashdot would be familiar with them - they put big spam posts
everywhere. Yes, and it doesn't surprise me. I don't think the screenshots are
real (at least not the Dashboard ones), but I have no trouble believing the
PDF."
Kim Kap Sol on AppleInsider.com said "I can guarantee those are fake." He then
continued by saying "Hello I R Korea KEKEKEKE OMG ZERG RUSH GOGOGOGO ^_^"
Gary's reply to this was "Way to make a complete idiot of yourself you
dog-eating douchebag."
Steve Jobs was unavailable for comment immediately following the keynote
address, though WWDC attendee and GNAA member Porfa noticed "A cute wiggle in
Jobs' ass as he walked away."
About Apple
Apple Computer is the creator of the Macintosh, popularly known as the "gay
computer". 87% of GNAA members are
...Microsoft is STILL the most evil company on the planet.
Roil \Roil\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Roiled; p. pr. & vb. n.
Roiling.] [Cf. OE. roilen to wander; possibly fr. OF.
roeler to roll, equiv. to F. rouler. See Roll, v., and cf.
Rile.]
1. To render turbid by stirring up the dregs or sediment of;
as, to roil wine, cider, etc., in casks or bottles; to
roil a spring.
Microsoft wins another patent lawsuit.
we do have a pay-as-you-go government!
"We pay our lawyers more."
USPTO take another look at Acacia Research's streaming media claims, too.
(If I wasn't in such a nice mood, I'd have written, "Take your head out of your ass, do what you have to do to completely reform how the USPTO reviews patents and then start reviewing and rejecting the huge lot of undeserved patents out there." But I'm in a good mood.)
I think that MS is being sued because they have the money, not because they are infringing. The pluging ability in IE is one thing, but the way I read the patent the makers of the plugin are he ones infringing. Anyway if there is real prior art out there everyone who makes a plugin is going to be happy.
As with trademarks, maybe patent holders should be obligated to protect their patents or risk losing them. This patent was applyed for in 1994 and granted in 1998. Web browsers were using 'plugin' technology for a long time before Eolas brought up this stink.
Does an institute of higher learning actually buy into this no-duh software patent?
Sad, I guess Universities are just like any other for-profit corporation these days.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Roil is US-English for rile....
Hey, wait a second, I thought we only liked Microsoft on odd Tuesdays.
I'm sure we're going to get several insightful jokes about Slashdot's collective head exploding due to two evils (software patents and Microsoft) coming together in a single article.
After all, who are we supposed to root for?
I believe the key in this situation is remembering that your belief in a right is perhaps best shown in whether you are willing to afford that right to an enemy.
Is the right to develop software free from the unneeded burden and litigation threat of software patents important to us?
I believe it is, and as such I cannot fully get behind the offensive use of software patents, even against an enemy such as Microsoft.
- Neil Wehneman
P.S. Have you donated to the EFF recently?
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Between evil companies and evil patents, it's pretty easy to see which is worse.
I was sure no-one on the microsoft patent team was aware of the fact that patents are not supposed to be awarded on something that has sufficient 'prior art'. If they know this then why.... oh, nevermind.
Yet another power play from Microsoft, once again aimed at the world in general. If this case goes through, it will add yet more lock-in to Microsoft's already locked in platform, while hurting the world in general. Does this mean we can no longer view Flash content from Linux or OS X?
Furthermore, most ad-blocking software is based on some sort of internet plugin. So does this mean that we have to get bombarded with popup ads just because we don't run IE?
Does this mean we have to pay some huge licensing fee to create a plugin for a browser -- or worse, have to pay a huge fee and have to use Microsoft's development software to create a browser plugin?
This could be the end of the 'Web as we know it. Internet Explorer and Windows country from here on, folks.
On the second front, Microsoft's allies in the software industry last fall persuaded the Patent Office to initiate a re-examination of the patent on the grounds that it was awarded improperly.
It's not that USTPO has realized that it has been granting bogus software patents, nor does it plan to change its attitude toward them.
After all, we all know that Microsoft is right now a big patent filler and that USTPO is paid by patent aplication.
I realize that Microsoft no more than IBM can afford to be seen as an easy mark by patent litigators, but in fighting this battle they are developing techniques which would certainly be used to defend Linux from Microsoft patent lawsuits. I can't believe it is a right hand/left hand issue either: Gates and Ballmer must know what is going on.
Puzzling.
sPh
Microsoft is trying to get a patent invalidated which would do what you think Microsoft is trying to do.
The Eolas patent they they have been sued over, and are attempting to have overturned on Prior Art grounds, claims to hold an exclusive patent on plug-in technology.
If Microsoft wins, they will have succeeded in getting a patent covering this method of plug-in interaction overturned.
What happened to http://www.bugmenot.com/? It appears to be dead, yet I have no idea why.
For $565 million they would probably buy into all sorts of stuff.
This story reminds me of the classic definition of "mixed Emotions" ... watching your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your new Cadillac!
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
If Microsoft wins this I'd really like to see them sue the USPTO to recover their legal fees. Until the USPTO is held accountable for granting patents on work that is either obvious or has prior art, they won't make any changes.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
1.) Sue Microsoft, which has a very, very large amount of money (HINT HINT)
2.) ????
3.) Profit!
As you can see, step 3 is never possible. So if you mean "just like any other for-profit corporation" in the sense that it's just like any other for-profit corporation which doesn't make any money, then yes, I think you're right.
Microsoft: This patent is invalid.
UC: No it's not.
Patent Office: We agree with microsoft, it is invalid.
UC: They said our patent's invalid, fix it.
Microsoft: It is invalid.
Board of Patent Appeals: We agree with microsoft, it is invalid.
UC: They said our patent's invalid, fix it.
Microsoft: It is invalid.
Federal Circuit Court of Appeals: We agree with microsoft, it is invalid. Further more, it seems the USPTO really needs an overhaul in regards to software patenting to stop this happening again. I recomend an inquiry into USPTO and software patents.
Microsoft: doh
I still don't understand where this myth comes from that the majority of slashdotters hate MS ...
Evidently the moderators are also not anti-MS because it appears posts defending MS are modded up!
At any rate, this whole patent lawsuit is a complete sham, and we all knew it from the beginning; there's no way EOLAS could have won.
Uh. When budgets are not met, it's always the schools and libraries that lose out.
"Sad, I guess Universities are just like any other for-profit corporation these days."
You mean they want to make money?
Creative Demolition
Any chance that Microsoft will submit a "doctored" videotape like they did in the antitrust suit, and then say "Sorry, that was the incorrect doctored videotape"?
And is there such a thing as a 'correct' doctored videotape?
People take religions, er, operating systems entirely too seriously here on Slashdot. Out in the real world, it's all about what you like that works already. Here, it's "Microsoft is the enemy but we can afford them this one victory." Enemy? Victory? Scary.
"Microsoft and its W3C allies"...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's not uncommon for universities to spin off for-profit companies for research done on their campuses or to license patents they are assigned.
Microsoft... in a fight to preserve standards... against evil patents... they do have prior art... meaning they innovated...
As Keanu would put it : Whoa.
grep for 'Tuesday'
Slashdot powers-that-be: IT IS TIME TO HIRE A TECHNICAL WRITER!
/. that I have to read 7 times to understand. This is absolute slop, and it is a pattern with this site.
I am sick of news items posted on
WTH, I thought I turned off YRO from my preferences, why is it still appearing in my /.
/. 's AI filter decided to show this YRO topic to me, bypassing my preference settings.
/. programmers are either incredibly brilliant, or they wrote buggy software again.
May be because it's a good news against stupid people,
Anyway, congrats MS. Shame on you UC, to force me to stand on MS's side.
And
I had a teacher one time speak about patent law in how it applied to Polaroid instant cameras. Now, come and sit around me in a semi-circle pattern and stare in amazement as I tell you a story...
Polaroid knew that once these new fangled instant cameras came out that everyone and their cousin would try and copy it. They would patent their initial design and would patent it and release it. They would continue to work on it but not update the cameras and a year before the old patent expires, they take out another patent based on their new and improved design and issue cameras using the new design.
Competing companies could use the 20 year old design but Polaroid already had excellent market position. If a customer wanted to buy an instant camera, do they get a Polaroid camera, a company with 20 years in the instant camera business, a household name with a now cheap price (once manufacturing prices go down to sane levels) or another company new to the market with a more expensive camera based on 20 year old technology.
Hey, you guys spelt ebola wrong!
It would be great in my opinion of the patent held, MS had to ante up the fine, and plugin-requiring content was pulled from web pages around the globe. Who uses plugins anyway and who isn't tired of the WWW being turned into a multimedia hell? Has there ever been a useful Flash "movie"? Why have the browser engulf another application? I'm sticking with Netscape 4.8 since it so handily allows me to specify external applications to separately handle various content in ways better than a bloated browser ever could.
The USPTO is building a paper record of reject-respond. They have now apparently finished round two, and round three is upcoming. But even a loss at round three is not a lethal strike. These are just actions at the Patent Examiner level. Any "final" rejection can still be appealed to the Patent Office Board of Appeals and Interferences. And if failing to win there, in the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
Given the political weight of the players in this fight, one should expect that the USPTO will issue a final rejection on the re-exam, and the Board will affirm the rejection. That is the normal course for the USPTO in high-profile cases.
But once the case hits the court, where the judges have life tenure and are somewhat immune from the "congressperson [name one] called", things may turn out differently.
This case is years from being over unless some settlement is reached between the parties in the meantime.
Wait a minute, I seem to recall windows 3.11 not having a browser "built-in", we were all left to download the browser of our choice back then. Netscape 3 or 4 was all I remember using, I'm not certain that there were others around at that time, but I do recall having to download these "plug-ins" things for it. So whats going on, where does all this fit in to the equation?
It's not uncommon for universities to spin off for-profit companies for research done on their campuses
Paid for by grants from Uncle Sam. It should be, if a University does spin off a company, then they should be ineligible for any grant from the government.
A question for those US ianal types out there. If microsoft is a publicly traded company should it not disclose to its investors how much it spends on what? I cant think of better proof of the "software patents only for big players (and kills little players)" argument then the grand total microsoft spend on fighting this single patent. Lawyers, reexamination fees, programmers working out alternatives not covered by the patent, more lawyers... This could easily run in to the millions and they still lost the lawsuit!
Is the financial impact for microsoft already reported somewhere, could investors ask for it?
The USPTO has handed Microsoft a second victory in a dispute over a browser plug-in patent that could roil the Web if upheld, rejecting arguments by Eolas and the University of California that technologies cited as prior art by Microsoft and its W3C allies that persuaded the USPTO to open a reexam were irrelevant.
The USPTO has handed Microsoft a second victory in a dispute over a browser plug-in patent that could roil the Web if upheld. In a reexam proceeding opened due to prior art submitted by Microsoft and its W3C allies, the USPTO rejected arguments against that art from Eolas and the University of California.
(Same content, same style, but much more readable. BTW, the major problem was that the words "were irrelevant" were placed much to far from the word "arguments".)
A software implementation is a "physical" realization of an abstraction: an algorithm or collection of algorithms. To extend the previous metaphor to pharma's: the algorithm is like the formula for a particular compound, and the software implementation (of which yours is just a particular version) is like a tablet/pill that just rolls off the assembly line.
The bigger question is: should algorithms be patentable. There is probably a stronger case for patenting algorithms than there is for patenting chemical compounds...
I bootleg Fizzy Lifting Drinks.
I read the above comment about patents open sourcing... he does have a valid point... but what if the open source community provided a voluntary consortium that let companies "donate" their patents under a GPL like lisence where the company would still be in control of the patents (to enforce their rights) yet the public could freely develop software without worry of being sued... the patents would still apply for companies selling software obviously... but for GPL software that does not make any money (besides support) they would not have to worry about being threatened... I have more ideas about how to implement this, and how it would protect company rights and public rights alike... webactivex@yahoo.com, but all I can see is IBM dumping their entire patent repository on to the OSS community... and it is a beautiful thing to imagine...
Ambient [Servlet Based Webapp Engine]
I was along for the ride when Mike Doyle pitched Eolas to some of my relatives back in the mid-90's after the patent was applied for but before it was issued and I've gone to some of their stockholder's meetings. I have the following observations to make:
1) Mike Doyle's father considered himself an inventor and had several patents. Doyle also considers himself an inventor. That's probably why, unlike many programmers, his first instinct when he thinks of a clever way to solve a programming problem is to patent it. He is very much in favor of patents because he strongly believes that they protect the little guy from exploitation by big business.
2) The "Eolas patent" isn't Doyle's only patent; it would be interesting to know what you all think of the other patents' validity. Back at the original pitch session I mentioned above, Doyle commented that he had a patent on a way of handling collisions in computer games and similar interactive, graphical application. He observed that people had been infringing his patent for years but he didn't find out in time to enforce it-- he only found out about the infringement when he read the book "Secrets of the Game Designers" (or something like that). He explained that this wasn't going to be a problem with the "Eolas patent" because he already knew it was being infringed. My reaction to his story was that the "game designers" had probably come up with the technique independently (would not necessarily invalidate the patent) and may have even done so before he did (would invalidate the patent). Say what you like about the man, but you've got to give him credit for self-confidence and faith in his own abilities.
3) Doyle also has a patent on a cryptographic system that he tried to spin out into its own company (as a subsidiary of Eolas) called "ProofSpace" or "ProofStamp" or something like that. I no longer recall the details of the product, but it was to be some kind of web-accessible digital timestamp. I think it was a good idea to actually make a product, and it was a product that was needed-- but the company was probably doomed from the get-go. I'm not convinced that Doyle's idea ever could have been made into a workable product. I was at their one and only shareholder's meeting, again the guest of a relative. I asked their main technical guy there some very pointed questions about they planned to secure the time signal they were planning to use and he absolutely could not answer them. I don't know much about cryptography and it is possible that my question was a "bad" one that couldn't be answered, but I don't think so. (If it were, I would imagine that the technical guy would have told me that.) It did not come as a surprise to me when later it turned out that their programming team was unable to make the product work and they went bankrupt.
In my opinion, Doyle is a bright guy. He should have taken his ideas and implemented them into a product or product(s) rather than just trying to play the patent lottery. Early on Eolas did try to do that. They sold a Tcl/tk development environment among other things. It could have potentially slowly grown into a profitable company. Instead, they bet everything on this one patent lawsuit against Microsoft. It took too much of Doyle's time to deal with it and they had to stop trying to exist as a real company. It's a shame.
You know I think what's really being lost here in all this blathering about MS and IBM and software patents is Xerox's original (prior art) for many if not ALL the foundational technologies that appear to have been "borrowed" by some many of the big patent holders of today.
It seems to me that these same big players are doing all they can to position themselves to extract potentially HUGE sums of money from whomever they can when their monopolistic business models are in danger of falling.
Just a humble thought from the fringe!
Oh and what colour are the terrorists today? Yellow? Blue? Whatever!
Okay, so many of them could spend a half a million dollars for lawyers and also hire a lobbying firm to steamroll over some bound-and-gagged bureaucrats who read in the news every other week about some other private sector "professional" calling the entire bureaucratic profession stupid.
But that's beside the point once you've invented a new circuit that software can inevitably simulate, and so there's no point in patenting it.
It's beside the point when some hack tech journalist with a deadline and no clue is looking for something to write.
It's beside the point when the politicians are happy to join in the lobbyist-inspired bureaucrat-bashing bandwagon.
Slashdotters have a gift for the perverse, just like any other info-mercial wind-up tool.
This idea that you can sit on patents until someone else is making millions on the same idea and then pounce on them is ridiculous...
Yes, it is. And the law agrees with you. Of course, IANAL, though...
The Doctrine of Laches states that a plaintiff who unreasonably delays action to the detriment of the defendant loses the ability to collect damages due to the delay.
In the case of intentional delay, the plaintiff would not be able to collect royalties for past infringement. If the defendant continued to infringe, the plaintiff could collect damages for that.
Thus, there are two mitigating factors in favor of the defendant:
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Thank you!!! I had to read the article 3 times before I understood what the hell he was saying. An article that long should be required to have more than 2 periods. The second sentence is pretty freaking confusing as well.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
That sum doesn't sound too different from the checks I actually wrote.
-----Chaz
Yeah, right. You regularly astroturf for Microsoft and blast anything Open Source. Talk about religiosity--you're a regular zealot (with ten replies in this story alone)! Douchebag says what?
Mods: Beware--this guy is the latest manifestation of bonch/Overly Critical Guy.
This is to inform you, gentle moderator, that the parent post is from a person who has trolled Slashdot in the past under the names bonch and Overly Critical Guy. Please, do all of us a favor and don't be taken in by this person's moronic brayings.
Thank you.
This has been a public service announcement.
Good. I hope MS wins in court, and can find a way to legally stick it to UC and Eolas to recover costs. Every patent of the sort Eolas was granted that I've seen is spurious. Now, if only MS would refrain from filing for the same kinds of patents... What's the most recent one? Pointing and clicking or double or triple-clicking an icon on the screen of a handheld device...? Those are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others. --Groucho Marx