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New Prior Art Cited In 2nd Eolas Patent Rejection

Posted by timothy on from the do-ya-feel-lucky-punk dept.

theodp writes "To be able to reject the Eolas browser plug-in patent a second time, the USPTO had to add the teachings of G.Toye after Eolas' response prompted the examiner to withdraw his previous finding that was based solely on the teachings of the W3C's Dave Raggett and Tim Berners-Lee. It's unclear where the Toye prior art came from, since the W3C didn't offer it when it asked the PTO to overturn the patent. Also, a newly available document reveals that the W3C's widely-publicized prior art filing, which was hastily made without community input, differed little from an unpublicized filing that was made weeks earlier by attorneys from Microsoft and AOL."

11 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. I may hate microsoft, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Getting that Eolas ruling overturned is a good thing. I for one am sick and tired of the bloodsuckers grasping patents to block innovation so they can make an easy million of patenting an idea they never implement.

    Software patents are bad... when you come up with an idea, and go about developing a large programming project, something is seriously wrong when the legal team does patent research and discovers that all that in house code that was written violates 30 patents.

    Something needs to be done... immediately.

    Cheers,
    James Carr

    1. Re:I may hate microsoft, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm more of a Linux fan than an MS one, but even I have to note that MS has not misused its patent portfolio. If it did it and I didn't notice, then that probably means it was much less egregious than what Eolas is doing.

    2. Re:I may hate microsoft, but... by CaptainFrito · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Yes, but what you describe is an abuse of the patent system. The patent system exists to encourage innovation by de-risking the open publishing of new ideas in exchange for a limited time monopoly on the claimed innovation. What's not claimed is fair game.

      What you suggest is an abuse of that design. What you suggest is exactly what I am endeavoring to make plain: That Microsoft will use money and politics to allow it to act however it wants, making it too expensive for people to compete, which is abuse of its monopoly power.

      Patents themselves are fine. I believe software patents are an abuse in themselves because they cover the written word. Why not start patenting romance novels or how-to books? Or the quickest directions on how to get to the grocery? Because the techniques involved in writing are not unknown, and that's what software is (and don't bother, I've heard all the 'final customization to the hardware' arguments, and they're just plain bogus. In that sense, romance novels are the final customizations for paper, driving directions are the final customization to the notepad.)

      Software, books, driving directions are all involved with cognitive thought, and that's not -- or should not be allowed to be -- patentable. The device with the software in it is patentable, but not the software itself, because it's out of context. A new refridgeration technique, and emodied and provable in a new refridgeration device is patentable. The software that turns on the light inside is not distictly patentable, except in the context of the entire apparatus. I realize that this is not how the law is applied now but I am discussing principle here, which is more lofty than simple law. Attempting to fix laws with new laws is a fool's game. If laws are unsuitable or inappropriate, it's the principles that need to be examined.

      Microsoft abuses its monopoly power, plain and simple, just like the bully at school beats everyone up to become and remain number one. Everyone sees a bully, but the bully sees he's number one. Microsoft uses money and politics and the court systems to stifle innovation and create an anti-competitive market that favors Microsoft. Regulators are more worried with appearance than correcting these moral abuses. Form over substance. Besides many of the regulators use the very same techniques themselves, so they can't be too zealous.

      In the end, Microsoft has become bad for software, bad for business, bad corporate citizen, bad for the economy. Most people know this intuitively, which is why so many rail against them. Or they simply figure out a way to get their face in the Microsoft trough, and then start talking nice about them.

  2. This is so stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm getting tired of reading about this patent fight in particular. For what? Plug-ins running in a browser. Has anyone up until this point ever heard of OLE in Windows? Its allows one application to work seamlessly in another e.g. a word document in excel, or quicktime in a web browser. Though they are different in many ways, they are the same concept. Plus OLE has been around since windows 3.1.

  3. software patents are bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Software patents are censorship. You shouldn't be stopped from making something because someone else thought of it first. Software should be sold on quality not on who gets the patent.

    1. Re:software patents are bad by Donny+Smith · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What a nonsense.

      > Software patents are censorship.

      And you are a moron.
      Software patents, like other patents, provide the creator with limited-time exclusivity on the invention in exchange for **making the information public**.
      Whether patentability of software or process inventions should be better regulated, that's another question.

      >You shouldn't be stopped from making something because someone else thought of it first.

      Nobody is stopped - you can do it while paying patent royalty.
      And one can invent a better approach, too.

      >Software should be sold on quality not on who gets the patent.

      Yeah, right. And the money needed for really serious R&D would come from anonymous "contributors" like you?

    2. Re:software patents are bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Surely you can understand how unfair it is for a programmer to find out that the code he has developed on his own is illegal to publish, just because someone else developed something similar earlier?

      It seems to me that the fast pace of software industry practically guarantees that the first to market already gets a serious advantage from being the first.

      I would be interested to find out if there are any examples of software R&D that was so expensive that only software patents made it worthwhile?

    3. Re:software patents are bad by wfberg · · Score: 4, Insightful


      >You shouldn't be stopped from making something because someone else thought of it first.

      Nobody is stopped - you can do it while paying patent royalty.

      There is no system of mandatory licensing in effect that would prohibit a patent owner from seeking unrealistic license fees.

      In fact, the patent system is used by the NSA to prevent progress in the field of cryptology for example; patents can be designated "secret" and still be in effect. Their staturory timespan even only kicks in after they've been declassified.

      So if you independently invent a means of cryptography, or of code cracking, that has been patented by the NSA, unbeknownst to yourself, they can force you not to implement it, without even telling you what they've patented. And when they get round to telling you, you still have to wait 17 years.

      Copyright and patents aren't "ownership rights" or even "monopoly rights" (which implies that you're at least selling something); they're prohibition rights (look ma, no act of congress!).

      --
      SCO employee? Check out the bounty
    4. Re:software patents are bad by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Cripes, people, learn the difference between the two. Copyrights and patents aren't the same thing with different terms of expiration.

      Nothing you said even approximates a refutation to my claim. Algorithims are not copyrightable today. If they could be, it would be even worse than allowing them to be patented (like they are today).

      . I think what the original poster meant was that specific algorithm code should be copyright protected,

      If you decide that someone meant something different than what he actually wrote, then don't attack me for disagreeing with his real words.

    5. Re:software patents are bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Cripes man ! You put the below two lines together in a single message, but notice any problem in it :

      1) "Patents at least expire in 20 years, but copyright is forever (less one day)."

      2) "Patents, on the other hand, are short term monopolies on methods and processes."

      Software is (mostly) something with a *very short* life-span. Most Windows-versions have a life-span of *less* than 5 years. Their patents exeede them by a *factor of (at least) 4*.

      In other words : after 15 years of a part/piece of software having become discarded (not commercially viable anymore) may it's software be looked at for "innovations" that than may be used in other software.

      *what other software* ? The OS has, after 15 years, gone, all it's programs too. Even the hardware the OS was build for does not exist anymore ... Just ask yourself : how many computers do still exist, in your neigbourhood/country, that *can* run Win95 ?

      How many programs do you know that have a life-span of 5 years (and are not superceeded by something "better").

      No. If Patents are *really* there to give the "inventors" a chance to gain from their work but at the same time give other the chance to build upon their shoulders, the time for "software patents" should be less than the life-span of the software it's applied to (*much* less !).

  4. Ah yes, the huge ammount of research money needed by Generalisimo+Zang · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Software patents, like other patents, provide the creator with limited-time exclusivity on the invention in exchange for **making the information public**

    Ah, so we all should be eternally gratefull that people have made the concepts of "one click shopping" and "clicking multiple times" public, rather than keeping this valuable IP a seeeekriiit forever.

    Yeah, right. And the money needed for really serious R&D would come from anonymous "contributors" like you?

    Ah... you're right, because nobody other than a large meganational corporation could possibly afford the huge research effort that went into the "one click shopping" patent, or the salaries of the phenomenally large numbers of scientists and technicians who devoted decades of thier lives to researching the "multiple clicks" patent.

    Nobody is stopped - you can do it while paying patent royalty.

    True. In much the same way that nobody is stopped from running a business in mafia territory... they just have to pay the protection money.