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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."
Ah. Decisions, decisions. I just don't know who I want to see get screwed more: Microsoft, or Eolas. I haven't been this perplexed since November 2nd.
Still, I worry that this whole affair is going to cause Microsoft to step up its evil campaign to acquire bogus software patents. Does anyone know where the money goes if Eolas wins?
" The school and its spinoff company called Eolas share the rights to a patent that they claim covers plug-ins and applets that are invoked through a Web browser."
It sounds from the article if it would, and I'm sure it's been discussed before - what's the concensus?
Screw you all! I'm off to the pub
that we use these things for years and then someone claims they invented it?
...I would think I were a pretty unobservant guy :/
I mean, if people were flying for years and I suddenly looked up and went...OH! look! people have been using my invention for years and I never noticed!
http://www.xcf.berkeley.edu/~wei/viola/aboutEolasM icrosoft.html
Microsoft could be forced to change Internet Explorer and make it incompatible with some web pages
They're presuming it's compatible in the first place.
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.
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.
If you RTFA, you'll discover that the judge's name is S. Jay Plager.
It seems to me that someone whose opinion is guaranteed to be "Plager"-ism isn't the best person to be judging an intellectual property case.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
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.
This patent is very broad, I'm sure both opera and firefox violate this shit. Ofcourse the lawyers will only go after the ones with deep pockets. Firefox is safe for now.
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?
only $565 million? just sneak into his house and scavenge his couch for change that slipped out his pockets.
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
Mr Wei's page about the Viola engine (and it's use as the base for the ViolaWWW browser) has what appears to be a clear example of using a plugin architecture to support filetypes that are not supported by the browser natively:
It does seem to me (although IANAPL) that this very clearly describes an implementation of what was later called a "plugin". I certainly hope that the courts do rule in favor of Microsoft's appeal, as the enforcing of this patent could seriously hurt the Mozilla based (and possibly other) Open Source browsers (and the platforms we use them on.
A lot of people seemed to be rooting for Eolas on this one, but that is short sighted and misguided crap in light of the fact that Microsoft can afford to pay nearly any award granted that might be.
I'm just surprised that they didn't swallow the "poison pill" in order to push whatever new, license encumbered, replacement for plugins that they might have waiting in the wings (or alternatively, not introduce any replacement, but agree to pay the royalties on the technology in order to de-comoditize the browser market in thier favor). So now I say to Balmer and Co, "Keep fighting the good fight. For once you're fighting to keep the web Free".
Read, L
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
This is Like The GI Joe eppisode wher The Joes and C.O.B.R.A. had to work together. or, something...
I hate stupid rules... Rules that make sense I don't mind... But the stupid ones just really bug me!
... plugins in IE are merely an offshoot of the system developed for Netscape all those years ago. ... applets are of course inventions of Sun.
So is the lawsuit to do with some technical detail in ActiveX?
Surely if can't be for something as vague as "applets and plugins".
I get annoyed when firefox decides to download a file when the application I want to open it in supports streaming, I know I can probably fix it, but I shouldn't have to.
I get pissed of when I accidental click on a pdf file and then have to wait for a week because the browser has let Acrobat embed itself.
We don't need less choice we need more choice...
Now all the browsers have to do to work around the patent (and do some innovating at the same time) is use heuristics on the choices that I've made to pick which applied or plug-in to use, which of-corse I patented yesterday.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
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
If this is seen as a patent infringement by Microsoft, then couldn't Microsoft sue the Mozilla Foundation for the automatic installation of plugins because it is similar to that of ActiveX?
If I found in my own ranks that a certain number of guys wanted to cut my throat, I'd make sure that I cut their throat.
It indicates the patent system isn't completely broken. I'd like to see them lose, and then appeal and win based on the fact that software patents are a stupid waste of time and resources.
Changa hates change.
Do you think the Jury system is outdated enough already? Please tell me how 12 or so people picked off the street (figuratively) can honestly make the correct decision about a technical subject this prickly.
"essentially exposing himself as a nonrational anti-MS activist."
This sort of thing happens in many patent cases. The judge probably made serious mistakes, but that doesn't make him an anti-MS activist. In fact, I seriously doubt the judge cares at all about MS, one way or the other.
There does exist anti-MS activism, but it is a rational, justified reaction to Microsoft business practices, like forced bundling agreements, Microsoft marketing FUD, and lousy security in Microsoft products. That kind of "anti-MS activism" is at the same level as activism against a polluting chemical plant or activism against corruption in government: it's real people without a marketing budget reacting to a real problem and misrepresentations by a powerful corporation with deep pockets.
Occasionally, anti-Microsoft activism may be unfair to Microsoft, and that is wrong: activism should stick to the truth and remain rational. But, on balance, Microsoft's conduct is so egregious compared to the miniscule amount of actually unfair criticism it receives that there is no justification for anybody to bellyache about "anti-MS activism".
>>Microsoft could be forced to change Internet Explorer and make it incompatible with some web pages.
And this is different from present day.....how?
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
You mean you understand the other Slashdot stories? You, sir, deserve a PhD.
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?
They didn't know they had they held this patent years ago?
Hmm.. what I remember from the last time this came up was that it would only affect Microsoft's ActiveX implimentation. Opera and Mozilla both use the origional Netscape Plugin Architecture (compatible with netscape 4.7x still, I believe) which is not affected by this patent.
Plugins are used in many applications, and they don't simpley have a patent on plugins. They have a patent on the way Active X does things. Whether it proves valid in court or not, I don't care. I don't like Active X.
Look back on the origional mention.. that's what I got out of it, at least..
I was curious and did a search on patents held by Eolas and invented by Michael Doyle, and I found this patent6 16701&F=0
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=US6
Entitled "Method and apparatus for identifying features of multidimensional image data in hypermedia systems", it only seems to be a patent describing ways to view or manipulate 3 dimensional images in a web brower, the method of which being execution of a "Program action"
The program action can include, for example, browser redirection, encapsulated HTML, dynamic HTML and downloading and running full-frame applets in the user's Web page.
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.
Pause. Consider it for a moment.
I sincerely hope that Eolas wins the appeal, because it will send the right message to Wall St. and Capital Hill about the shitty state of affairs of our patent system.
If Microsoft loses $500 million dollars Wall St. will start looking at the current patent system as a huge liability rather than an asset. After all, what's so great about having patent portfolio on a small set of technologies that you can use to sue a few competitors when you're vulnerable to being sued yourself by a company that can't be sued for infringement themselves because they don't actually produce anything.
To be honest, I can't think of a better way to send a clear signal to Wall St. and Capitol Hill to fix the patent system, and I certainly can't think of a better sacrificial lamb.
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?
Just because Microsoft cannot introduce Viola does not mean others cannot if they are sued. It all depends on the reason for rejection of introducing Viola's prior art. If it is only because of late filing etc., I say let Microsoft be screwed and we already have a good defense.
Don't tell me this will make Microsoft start collecting patents, they will do that no matter what. It is a very efficient, and indeed a legal, way to maintain a monopoly, which Microsoft loves.
ato
"If upheld, the patent could force Microsoft and other browser makers to take out a license if they want to run, within the browser, applications like Macromedia's Flash animation software, Adobe's PDF document software, or Sun Microsystems' Java programming language. A workaround could disrupt millions of pages around the Web, industry and standards experts warn."
from this article, which is merely a conventient summary of the ramifications if the Eolas patent is upheld. You really think the W3C would get concerned about Active X?
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.
First, he was a UC student... so if he was ever paid by the UC, in anyway then any "ideas" are University property... regardless of when you invented it (i.e spare time). I am not sure what the academic agreement was... but most Universities (even when you pay to go to school) take your patentable ideas. This is even for undergraduate students. But that might be a new law, rather than an old one.
Second, people usually file a preliminary patent 1 year before the real on gets filed.. In this case it may predate Pei Wei's claims that his prior art existed... (i.e. the main Eloas patent was filed Nov 1994... So 1 year previous was Nov 1993. Which is
more or less around the same time as Pei Wei claims to have "shown" his code around. "Showing" your code around generally means nothing. Usually the UC requires an extensive documentation process as well as the "date" the invention was made practical.. That all gets examined by the patent people.
Third, we as the public do not know the specific Court arguments are, so we can't really say what is what.. I am sure the judge had a good reason to restrict the presentation of Viola as prior art.
Fourth, Pei Wei was a UC student... I am pretty sure that discounts the main argument of his art being prior art.
Fifth, big deal if the web breaks. It will evolve quickly. It won't break overnight, people still have to upgrade their browsers. Old apps will still work for awhile. MSFT is just spreading FUD, so is the W3C.
Sixth, I have no stake in this either way.
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.
If I'm sued for patent infringement when I punch my way out of my coffin when they bury me alive, I can mention Pai Mei's prior art!
Oh wait, different guy...
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Microsoft could be forced to change Internet Explorer and make it incompatible with some web pages.
Trust me, they don't need to change IE in order to make it incompatible with a lot of web pages.
This is being fought on two fronts
1. They(MS) have appealed the decision by the lower court in favor of Eolas.
2. The patent itself is under dispute.
The patent has so much negative consequences that even W3C is supporting the Microsoft case.
http://www.w3.org/2003/10/28-906-briefing
Hope the web stays intact.
Life is just a conviction.
Both still take a few chips in their pockets to feed the lawyers. Yes, the lawyers are evil, yes patents are evil... but really I wouldn't mind at all if several hundred companies through themselves at MS with possibly-legit patents, bogging down their legal teams (so that they can't sue others for awhile) and putting whatever drain on the pocketbook they can.
I wouldn't feel bad if Eolas loses in the end, but I'd be more than happy to see this case drag itself along for several years.
I don't see how this would change the internet. Does one really think that users will exchange their "old" browser that supports plugins for an "upgraded" version that does not support plugin? Or will we have a US version of browsers without plugin-support?
The best would be if all software development would legally move to India or so. Then the US can have their own patent-protected internet (and software in general), and the rest of the world can carry on without having to even read this kind of stuff.
BTW now that we're talking about the subject: where did all the talk go about the US elections? I really miss those 5 articles/day about that subject.
If something is in the public domain, it is not property, it cannot have an owner, and it cannot be stolen.
It is common practice (when doing patent searches, prior to implementing a product) to evaluate the validity of each claim in the patent. That evaluation includes examining prior art.
Contrary to your claim that "Law is a pretty blunt hammer" is the commonplace observation that "The wheels of justice grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine."
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
At the end of the day the patent war really wont benefit the end user as much as many of the companies claim to thier investors/stock holders. Many software patents really should exist as there is just about no way for the joe-home programmer to know if they are breaching patents the way they are writing code. At the end of the day when you click on the start button in windows or the K icon in KDE does it come up and say.. patent pending or patent xyz... nope.. and really at the end of the day can joe-programmer at home really afford to waste hundreds of hours covering his arse in the long term?. Software patents benefit profits for the big boys in town and the rest of the industry suffers. Both sides have valid arguments and having a good quality license system will benefit everyone if thats the way it has to go.. in the end software patents should be maximum 5years anyway as the industry moves so fast 5years makes or breaks most companies. .
Got a question about UNIX ask it here : Unix/xBSD Forum
Misleading headlines are generally considered good journalism if they make you read the article. (Yes I know it stinks, but I am not a journalist)
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Finally, the UC system can have an excuse to lower tuition, but you know, the damn economy...
.smell my feet.
Knowing of prior art he still applied for his patent and specifically ignored Viola in his application even though he was corresponding with the guy?
This reeks.
Worse than that a Judge actually ruled against possible evidence because it might actually damage Eolas's case? Isn't that what court is all about? Showing ALL relevant evidence?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Fundamentally HTML 3.0 (ie: highly container based), plus many extensions for richer formatting capabilities. Extensions such as for multiple columns formatting, document insertion (client side), and dynamically collapsable/expandable list.
Sidebar panel: for displaying "meta" information, or for intra document navigational links, etc. The panel is engaged and disengaged by the presence of the document that is associated with the sidebar document.
Dynamic toolbar: document engaged tool applets (ie: navigational aids).
Rudimentary stylesheet mechanism for attaching styling information to a document. For changing document's fonts, color information, alignments.
A scripting language that is accessible from the HTML, such that an HTML document can embbed highly interactive scripts/applets.
Miscellaneous niceties: hotlist facility; shows HTTP loading progress in a pie chart (when it has the information).
An experimental platform. It's source available, even most of the browser is constructed in a highlevel scripting language; and is very customizable to someone who understands the scripting language.
Motif front-end. The X11 (non Motif) version is also available.
Self contained single binary for easy installation, unlike the old ViolaWWW which required setup of various viola application files.
Holly cow! That's for a 1991 app!
The owner of a patent or copyrght holder can charge whatever they want to different entities.
That is why students get discounts for some software while other people have to pay the full price...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You forgot to mention that Eolas is no software company such as Microsoft (hate them, but they are a software company with code) but a well-known patent privateer. They filed patents for various technologies they claim to own such as the Digital timestamp and so on. Eolas also forced IBM to license their "e"-Trademark also used by the eBusiness advertisement campaign from IBM.
What is a patent privateer? A patent privateer obtains patents and sues/blackmails technology companys in the market place.
Software patents are evil. It is time to get organised and to get rid of them.
Martin Lueck a partner at Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi who is representing UC and Eolas, said Wei's demonstration of his browser in May 1993 didn't qualify as legitimate prior art because it was on a standalone computer that wasn't hooked up to the Internet.
Wasn't plugged in so didn't count, nah nah nee nah nah, im a clever lawyer!
If that is what it takes for Software companies and goverments to realize that software should not be patentable, so be it.
The only way things will get fixed is when the big boys are beaten and goverments realize patenting of software is killing innovation by the small guy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
don't you mean good lawyer.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
This is fucking insane. I thought no one could file patents for *IDEAS*. Imagine if Thomas Edison could not just file a patent for the "light build" device, but patent "devices that use electricity to generate light", or even "devices that generate light without the need for fire".
I find it funny how Microsoft is always saying the GNU is so poor on avoiding patented methods while they themselves are just as bad.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"The case has broad implications for the internet"???? Is IE the only browser out there?!?! Go to Mozilla.com!!
You got it! The only non-trivial software patents are the blatantly obvious patents on mathematical algorithms. Mathematical algorithms are not statutory material for patents. I've never seen a software patent that is valid under existing US law.
The original Eolas browser their work was done in, and distributed with was done in Mosaic. They should lose just on those grounds, since they never licensed Mosaic... and they should have because it was only free for non-commercial use.
MS needs to win this one if US patents are going to be respected by the international community in the long run. I say the long run because right now, other countries ostensibly repect US patents because they want to sell their goods and services in the US. I'm not economicist, but I think the US has the largest economy.
However, it won't be that way forever. At some point in the future, its quite concievable that other countries won't care about US patents, and we can cry foul all we want, impose santions all we want, with no or little effect. If for example, MS sues some Chinese or Indian software company for using linux, they can choose to do business in another country.
Although this seems unlikely to americans, if the US itself upholds patents like the Eolas patent, (or even the use-laser-pointer-to-entertain-cat patent), other countries are more likely to not respect US patents. Although there is international law about patents, sovereign countries can choose not to hear the legal complaints of US companies claiming some native company is in violation of a US patent. Worse still for the US, as the US debt to other countries grows, the US is less likely to try economic sanctions as a way of enforcing their foolish patents overseas. After all, its not wise to piss off someone you borrowed money from. China, for example, currently owns about 45% of the US foreign debt. Getting into a trade war with someone that you owe so much money to makes it very difficult to borrow from others around the globe.
If country reached the near-inevitable conclusion that US patents are granted without due investigation or without any commen sense thought to things like prior art or whether or not something is obvious and trivial, then they may not respect US patents, if for no other reason than the fact the US patents are granted without just cause.
So, if the US wants its patents to be continued to be respect by other countries, MS needs to win. The current patent problem in the US won't change if MS gets defeated, incidentally. MS just isn't enough of a player on Wall street for them to care, and patent reform won't ever be driven by corporations anyway - at least not until other countries get to the point of not respecting US patents. At that point, when it starts hurting enough corporations, then they might start calling for reform, but not sooner.
"The case has broad implications for the internet"???? Is IE the only browser out there?!?! Go to Mozilla.com!!
1) For most people (93% as a rough estimate based on the stats for non-techy sites I've run) still think IE is the only browser out there, and if 93% of the web clients out there use IE, then 100% of the websites out there have to be compatible if they're going to be accepted. If Microsoft has to strip certain things out of IE, expect 99% of the sites out there on the web to strip those things out of their content very quickly indeed, and seeing as things such as Flash and Java are seemingly covered by this patent, not to mention things like QuickTime, etc, expect a lot of the web's content to be changed if these guys win. I'd call that a pretty broad implication.
2) Do you really think these people are going to leave it at Microsoft? How long before they go after Mozilla.org? or Opera? How long before Firefox, with it's rising profile and easy and overt plugin system, becomes their next target? If they get a legal precedent by smiting Microsoft, don't expect them to turn around and say 'thank you, OSS', expect them to use it as a very big stick to beat Moz and Opera down with. If the Mozilla Foundation have enough money to pay for a New York Times ad, they've got enough money to be sued by a greedy guy with a dumb patent.
Seriously, this is a Really Bad Thing(tm) and no matter how much these guys say they're doing it for OSS, you'd better be rooting for Redmond on this one...
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
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.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Microsoft also claimed that the district court erred when deciding that its alleged patent infringement extended to foreign sales. If the appeals court buys that line of thinking, Microsoft could see its damages drop to less than $200 million.
Anyone know why Microsoft would think that the suit should not extend to foreign sales? I didn't see the reasoning for this in the article . . .
You have many great reasons why this is a big deal. I just get really upset when I see IE raised up on some pedistool, like the masses have to bow down to Microsoft's way all the time.
Who knew that Chinese Restaurants would start making web browsers?
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
"Microsoft could be forced to change Internet Explorer and make it incompatible with some web pages. "
As if it isn't already??
to stiffle competition from the ground up. There's been misuse issues as long as there have been patents, IIRC back from the 15th century in the republic of venice. I still have to see a defense of patents that hold water. There is not one which is not founded on IP of the public, in other words patents are the very essence of IP theft. Just drop the whole BS. And don't tell me ppl will stop inventing, it's part of human nature. Bah, braindead commercialism.
Life has become the ideology of its absence - T.W. Adorno
It's not just this lawyer. The patent office fairly consistently agrees with this nonsense.
Copy protection protects the implementation from copying. I.e. it protects outright theft of the code. The patent protects the process or the algorithm or the ingenious invention. Do we have a right to patent an idea or process when its implementation is in software? Is software any different than a physical (manufacturing or biotech) invention? Is information "patentable". Do you think Google's pagerank deserves patent protection? All it is is a Markov chain with some fancy extra bits. Why is a plugin (a web page with fancy bits) not patentable?
If you invent something, a publically disclose it through the USPTO you have a right to market protection in the USA.
Yes, even 1-click, or a laser toy to entertain cats. Or whatever is reducible to a commericial or competitory product. The question is, what a patents effect will be on open source. Usually academics are not sued for patent infringement when they perform research on a patented idea. You might have to buy a license intrinsic with the product.
Open source per se may not be sueable in a distributed fashion, but certainly people making money of open source inventions are.
Computer software evolves regardless of the patent space. If a patent blocks you, invent a way around it.
The Netflix patent does not affect you or me, it affects Netflix and any big-time competitors. That is the way the patent system was designed. To protect the little guy from big corporate stealing.
For instance you can patent page-rank. It gives you an output of useful information. But you can't patent what you do with that information. But pagerank is a statistic, "a score", or a way of generating scores? You can surely compute your own score using a slightly different model and not be infringing.
Although the consensus seems to be that Wei was practicing the art in Viola before Microsoft, Eolas had a good argument to keep out the evidence. Eolas argued (and it sounds like the Judge accepted) that although Wei may have developed the technology, later patented by Microsoft, before Microsoft, Wei abandoned it. If you don't "practice the art", e.g., make it public,exploit it somehow, it will not prevent a later inventor from patenting the technology. My guess is that this is the argument the judge accepted. Eolas also argued that Wei's computer wasn't hooked up to the internet, but I don't think that would be as persuasive.
As I understand it, the judge disallowed nearly ALL Viola testimony because the copy of the Viola code that was available at the time would only work across the net with a beta version of the HTTP protocol. But there was no pre-1.0 HTTP server available at the time of the trial and Viola would break on a post 1.0 HTTP server. So the trial Viola demo was run by getting HTML through a file:// url (instead of an http:// url) simply to show that the old Viola could run external applications in an HTML page (that being the subject of the patent). But the judge then decided that since a file:// url was used in the demo, Viola was therefore not a "web browser" and so did not constitute prior art and so NO testimony about Viola was allowed AT ALL.
This in spite of the fact that Viola was well known by Tim Berners-Lee and other early web developers as being one of the first web browsers ever made! This in spite of the fact that even the Viola code at the trial was packed full of HTTP and HTML processing code, clearly indicating that it was intended, in part, as a web browser.
What the judge should have done is allowed Viola to be demonstrated as functioning on the script-in-a-page level and then relied on verbal assurance from Pei Wei that in the past Viola had been functioning as an HTTP-capable web browser as well. The web browser part would have to rely on Pei Wei's credibility as a witness while the application-in-a-page part could have been demonstrated by the code available at the trial. Throwing out ALL Viola testimony because the only remaining code available at the trial happened to be need an old HTTP server that was unavailable at the time IMO is unreasonble and seemingly disingenuous. The only reason in my mind that a judge could allow himself to exercise such an egregious lapse of judgement would be if he were motivated by some bias in the case. Granted, I am not a lawyer and I am not intimately versed in all the technicalities that are "necessary" in legal warfare, but it just seems to me that on a normal human-reasoning level an aweful injustice is being done here.
I understand that at the trial Michael Doyle had NO software and yet he was allowed to claim all kinds of capabilities for his old software using only charts and other paper. Pei Wei had a nearly completely functional copy of the old Viola code demonstrating the app-in-a-webpage functionality along with HTTP and HTML code (showing that Viola was intended as a fully functional web browser) but he had no old-style web server that was compatible with it. Yet Pei Wei's verbal testimony and visual aids about what the software used to be able to do was not permitted... In fact, NONE of his testimony about anything Viola was permitted in the case. Does that seem like a rational fair-minded judgement?
I think Pei Wei said that the judge didn't want to allow testimony about Viola because it would "bias the jury against Eolas". Well geez, the facts are _supposed_ to bias the jury! What if a judge decided to throw out testimony placing the defendant at the murder scene with a bloody knife in his hand because it might bias the jury??
wag more
bark less
Maybe that's not such a bad thing. I think software patents are going to be around no matter what. Unfortunately there are just too many people with money to lobby for them who stand to gain from them. Not to mention that I think a really innovative idea deserves the reward of being owned by it's inventor for a time.
My feeling, until shit has come to light, is that we just need to focus on fixing patent law rather than trying to rid ourselves of it. Problems currently arising include really ridiculous patents right? Well, how do we go about fixing that? Maybe we should have people in the decision making process who are actually informed about the things being patented. Also, how long do patents currently last? If I'm not mistaken, the patent system was basically created for a much slower moving world. Things that were invented 50 years ago weren't neccessarily improved on as quickly as technology moves now. That being the case, maybe the patents should be a lot shorter for software. A year maybe?
I'm not a lawyer, I don't know much about patents, so this whole post could be completely off, but these are ideas that are floating in my head right now and I hope they will be of use to somebody.