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Argument Held in $565 mil Microsoft Patent Case
Grotius writes "As reported in CNET, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the court that hears patent appeals) heard oral argument in an appeal from a $565 million award against Microsoft for infringing patent rights held by the University of California and Eolas. The University and Eolas share the rights to a patent that they claim covers plug-ins and applets that are invoked through a Web browser.
The case has broad implications for the internet -- Microsoft could be forced to change Internet Explorer and make it incompatible with some web pages. However, the issue before the court was narrow: Whether Microsoft should have been permitted to present evidence to the jury of prior art in the form of an earlier web browser called Viola created by Pei Wei."
well, I'd say part of it is in the long drawn out patent process itself. you register your invention, then wait for the patent. and wait, and wait, and wait.
then the patent comes through, and you grab your legal flamethrower.
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
If Eolas wins this case, expect a massive deluge of Patent suits across the entire industry.
And you thought SCO vs IBM was wild....just wait, methinks it will get worse before it gets better.
"Does anyone know where the money goes if Eolas wins?"
the lawyers. on both sides.
/ cynicism
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
The best thing that can happen to patent law is to have a big player like MS get screwed by it.
Then MS can start putting their lobbying bucks into fixing patent law.
The only problem is that MS (with congress) will likely fix it in a way that only benefits MS.
So I guess it's moot.
Look at it this way.
If Microsoft wins, they have keep millions, and Eolas gets screwed.
If Eolas wins, Microsoft STILL has billions in reserve, has a legit reason to patent everything under the sun, and Eolas has filled its legal coffers for an attack on another browser which can take plug-ins, like Opera or FireFox
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
I'm taking bets on how long it will be until Microsoft auditors show up at UC and Eolas to make sure they don't have any pirated copies of Windows.
I worry that if MS loses they might make yet another lame "standard" that further fractures the internet and prevents good, mostly standard compliant browsers like Safari and Firefox from rendering the majority of websites because they use some MS propriety junk.
It's bad enough ActiveX exists in the first place, imagine how much worse it can get.. or don't if you want to sleep at night.
patent rights held by the University of California
What is a public institution doing patenting things? Shouldn't their research be used for the public good? Is money made from this patent being used to help further educational programs?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
As far as I heard (here in a previous post of the story), it was some professor who holds the patents, and I'd imagine both he and the university share the money. He's doing this as retribution towards Microsoft, and since he's a professor, he's not pressing the OSS alternatives. Shouldn't you like that someone who actually created something get money from Microsoft, whether or not it was done in a fair system? Are we going to be stupid enough to let people like MS manuiplate patent law and bitch when someone little gets his?
or continue on to sue Mozilla.org, Opera and others?
This would affect all browsers that use embedded plug-in and applet technology. Opera, Firefox, Netscape, IE - they're all in the same boat. In the past, Eolas has claimed they would only go after Microsoft, in order to give Mozilla a boost, but I'm sure that wouldn't last long.
The sad thing is that the real loser if Eolas wins is the end user. Rather than license the Eolas patent, browsers would most likely switch to an interface of some sort that forces the user to choose to use the plug-in or applet to view a site.
Shouldn't you like that someone who actually created something get money from Microsoft, whether or not it was done in a fair system? Are we going to be stupid enough to let people like MS manuiplate patent law and bitch when someone little gets his?
NO!
It does matter how the outcome is achieved. The ends do not justify the means, not even when it's a university professor trying to extort money from Microsoft. One reason we have the (few, and eroding all the time, but still meaningful) civil liberties we do in America is because the whole foundation of our legal system is the idea that there must be a fair process, not just a fair result.
To throw that away for the sake of dinging MS a paltry couple of billion is to undercut the foundation of our own remaining few liberties. I don't know about you, but to me that's destroying the village in order to save it.
-- Old Man Kensey
But of course then lawyers would switch to suing who had first prior art rather then first valid patent.
Letter To Iran
Since Microsoft has the defacto standard for web browsers, right or wrong as it might be, then the no-longer-working web pages will be looked upon as the ones that are broken. Their owners will have to make them compatible with the new "standard".
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
If that's an hour's work for you, I'd be curious to hear what you accomplish in a 40 hour work week. If you worked for EA, we'd be living on Mars by now.
(Note: the above remarks do not take a stand on whether software patents should exist at all. It is not necessary or desired to argue for anyone to debate the issue with me. Thank you.)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Perhaps if MS loses they might start lobbying with their vast sums of money to change patent law...something the rest of the world already thinks needs doing.
On the other hand it is MS...so whatever they do will probably screw the rest of us.
You guys just don't realize that if Microsoft loses the battle, then it would become a huge precedent for other software which could be in similar situation that Internet Explorer.
This is, people, either small or big, will start suing software producers around the world (either commercial or OSS), for stupid patents that got granted by an unfair patent system.
Maybe Microsoft or SCO could precisely cite this case against Linux. Don't you realize that? *one* single patent is all they need.
In this case, we need to support... not Microsoft, but the web community. Microsoft happens to be on our side of the fence (just by coincidence, but still). If we let Microsoft lose, we're practically letting all the stupid patent holders ruin the web, and maybe the entire Open Source efforts. Do you REALLY want that?
I don't want Acrobat reader embedded in my web page. I never have. When I look at a web page I wanna see html. I don't wanna see Macromedia Flash or a Java applet, or any of that other crap. If you wanna give me the option to run an app with your downloaded junk, fine, I'll happily press yes when I want it and no when I don't.. but don't embed it in the web page.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I agree with you, and you can throw in DH PKI in there too. But that's three patents out of how many thousands of CS patents in 25 years?
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Just hours after reporting that the patent system is utterly skewed to the advantage of large corporations, it is observed that Microsoft continues its appeal of a huge 9-figure judgment against it.
This article doesn't begin to describe how bad it has been for Microsoft, who has been the successive record holder as a patent defendant against comparatively tiny companies (or residual shells of them) since the cases brought years ago by tiny STAC. And now Eolas.
What is more, that wasn't the only bad verdict against Microsoft in recent years. A recent listing of the top 100 major verdict in civil actions included more than a dozen IP verdicts, all against huge companies, with Microsoft appearing on the list more than a few times.
Yeah, its terribly skewed against small companies and in favor of big ones, except for when it isn't.