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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?
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.
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.
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.
only $565 million? just sneak into his house and scavenge his couch for change that slipped out his pockets.
University of California is a public institution, but it is run like a private one compared to the other state university system, California State University. Most private schools possess things like intellectual property.
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
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
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
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?
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.
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.
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