Slashdot Mirror
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."
As I understand it, the patent involves the plain obvious notion of running active elements inside web pages. But Viola, a number of other technologies, and even discussions of the old WWW mailing list of which Doyle was a part all established prior art efforts of developing this notion before Doyle ever filed his patent.
But the judge in the MS case did not permit effective testimonies to the jury about all this prior art, particularly Viola, based on ridiculous technicalities, essentially exposing himself as a nonrational anti-MS activist. The judge just seemed to be soley focused on sticking it to Microsoft.
But instead what he's done, I believe, is established a precedent where now one man and his team of lawyers get to rape and pillage anyone who has developed some kind of active web page element technology over the past 10 years. This may well include Sun, Macromedia, and Adobe, for example.
Doyle took an obvious idea and has succesfully manipulated the half-witted patent system into netting himself hundreds of millions of dollars of other people's hard work in good faith based on public technology concepts and he's not gonna stop there.
wag more
bark less
In other words, I'm getting screwed anyways, since I don't have money for bogus patents. Nor for non-bogus patents, for that matter.
Not that there is such a thing as a non-bogus software patent. Tell me, people, can one of you come up with a single example of a non-bogus software patent? Like something you'd look at and think "Ah, clever!"?
Because any software patent I had the honor of reading so far was bogus, wicked, money-grabbing, asshole-lawyer enriching, not-worth-paper-it's-printed-on, trivial piece of crap, that any sophomore Comp.Sci. student would come up with in 30 minutes or less. Man, am I upset, or what..
Probably Not! (Here's why).
The general trick if you are going for maximum profit is to first sue a small company, and get a successful precident. It costs you less to fight the action against a smaller company, and improves your chances of getting the really big money later by giving you some already recorded findings that the court will generally accept and not let your opponent delay over. Taking on Opera (for example), first, and Microsoft second or later makes more sense if it's all about the cash.
For a publicly traded company, this is even more plausable. Winning a small decision that seems to forshadow a bigger win can really drive up the price of stock without costing much at all to implement.
The chief reason people are concerned that this lawsuit might be the first of a series is probably SCO's lawsuits. After all, SCO avoided going after smaller fry first and went for IBM. However: 1. That doesn't seem to be working too well, and other companies are at least as likely on observing it to avoid the strategy as imitate it. 2. There's no indicators that Eolas has been secretly coached in this strategy, backed by (say) the veiled resources of the powerful Lynx Megacorporation in an attempt to regain browser dominance for Eolas's hidden puppeteer.
Who is John Cabal?
What if the principle of eminent domain were applied to some of these sleeper patents? In cases where IP rights have been unenforced for years and a thing has come into widespread use, the public good should outweigh belated claims of infringement. Alternately, a statute of limitations on infringement would force IP holders to either exercise their rights in a timely fashion or not at all. Products that are on the market for say two years with no infringement claims against them should become immune to such claims. That might make it harder for patent holders to wait in the shadows for somebody else to do all the hard work before snatching a share of the profits.
Because, if his real intent was to give a boost to Mozilla, it would have been done differently. First he'd contact the makers of the browsers he wanted to boost, and offer them a license. It could be for free, you don't have to charge for a license (well actually because of the nature of contracts it would probably be a one time fee of $1 for a perpetual license). With those secured, he'd then go after Microsoft for an injunction, to stop them from distributing a browser with the patented technology.
That would really put MS in a bad spot (supposing the patent wasn't garbage, which it is). The others would have licenses and continue happily, while MS would be barred from distributing IE until they removed the patented feature. They couldn't do anything about it either, you don't have to license to any particular company if you don't want.
No, it's pretty clear his one and only goal is to make himself rich. The open source line is probably just to try and get the OSS people to buy in and help him out.
This is why patent law really needs (among other thigns) a use-it-or-lose-it clause like trademarks. Basically, it should require that when a product comes to market that uses your patented technology that you should reasonably be aware of (meaning it's not brand new or really small or something) you are required to either enforce your patent, or it'll become invalid.
It's stupid that people and companies can get a patent that they have no intention of developing, sit on it when a product comes out, sit on it while that product grows, and just wait until everyone is using it, then suddenly try and extort money. The requirement should be that, if you want to actually use your patent, you have to do so when the product using it starts to come to market, so they person bringing it can decide if they want to pay you, or change their product.
What is to stop Microsoft from hiring a lousy lawyer just so they will lose this case and 500 million but use this case as precedent to go after linux (thru SCO). Afterall MS can afford 1/2 a billion and they would love to get a precedent like you mention.
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare