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New Prior Art Cited In 2nd Eolas Patent Rejection
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."
1. Actually, for embedded devices, WinCE actually runs on a large number of them. You're just not aware of it as they are not always branded as Windows Powered and these run on many different types of CPUs. If you mean desktop, it may be true that Windows doesn't run on most of the desktop processors, but it does run on >90% of all desktops. 2. Last I heard, you could buy a PC without Windows. And nothing has ever stopped you from building your own. This is what I did. 3. Hmmm, public domain means public domain. Not sure what you mean unless you misunderstand what public domain means. They've used BSD code and put up the necessary copyright info as required by the license. 4. Microsoft has yet to abuse their patent portfolio. While on the other hand every other week they are being sued for patent infringement. Perhaps they are building a defensive portfolio?