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."

Comments

Re:Would this also affect firefox?

[periol]

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.