Appeals Court Sends Eolas Case Back For New Trial

Rolan writes "News.com is reporting that an Appeals court has partially overturned the lower court's decision in favor of Eolas. From the story: "Microsoft on Wednesday claimed a victory in a high-profile Web browser patent dispute, as an appeals court partially reversed a lower court decision that left the software giant exposed to $565 million in damages." The article does not say what part was or was not overturned." Reader shogusumi adds a link to the ruling itself (PDF), supplies a link handy for catching up with the claims at issue here, and writes "As a refresher, this is the case that claims that the functionality provided by IE through the use of embed, applet, and object tags violates a patent owned by Eolas and the University of California."

Comments

Second Major Victory for Microsoft in as many days

[moofdaddy]

This is the second major victory for Microsoft in two days. Slashdot didn't pick up the story but yesterday M$ won a pretty large appeal in the 9th circuit which dealt with patent and license issues having to do with ActiveX. While we all know ActiveX is terrible and its usuage has created one of the larger security holes known to man the victory is still a bad one because of the message that it sends to the lower courts. That issues involved a plug in developers access to APIs and whether they were allowed to create whatever they want. It is very legal jargon heavy and hard to summeraize the real implications, thats why I think it recieved such little press. The big suprise is that this happend in the 9th circuit where they are normally very friendly to the common man.

The bottom line is that M$ is on a winning streak and we need to cross our fingers in the hopes that some judge is brave enough to step up against them.

More Details....

[Rolan]

As usual, the news didn't give the full story. The judgement has been vacated and remanded, meaning that it's back in the District Court's hands to redo....

From the ruling:

In conclusion, because the district court improperly granted JMOL in Eolas' favor on Microsoft's anticipation and obviousness defenses and improperly rejected Microsoft's inequitable conduct defense, this court vacates the district court's decisions and remands for further proceedings on these issues. In addition, this court affirms the district court's claim construction of "executable application" and finds the district court did not err in its jury instruction with regard to the claim limitation "utilized by said browser to identify and locate." Finally, this court affirms the district court's holding that "components," according to section 271(f)(1), includes software code on golden master disks.

Re:More Details....

[angle_slam]

To further explain: first, JMOL means Judgment as a Matter Of Law. The trial court ruled that no jury could find in favor of Microsoft, so ruled on the case instead of the jury.

The remand is primarily based on one piece of prior art, the Viola Browser developed by Pei-Yuan Wei. The trial court ruled that Wei abandoned his invention and therefore the browser was not relevant as prior art. The appeals court ruled that Wei did not abandon his invention, therefore the jury has to consider whether or not the Viola browser is prior art to the Eolas invention.

If you want further details, Wei developed DX34 version of Viola and disclosed it to Sun engineers. He subsequently modified it and released the new version (DX37) to the public. The trial court ruled that the new version is a separate invention and constituted an abandonment of DX34. The appeals court disagreed, saying they are the same invention and thus the release of DX37 did not abandon DX34. (If Wei had abandoned his invention, it woiuld not be prior art).

Re:A victory?

[Big_Al_B]

The lower court decision left M$ vulnerable to damages. The appeals court partial reversed it. A poorly written sentence indeed.

Re:Second Major Victory for Microsoft in as many d

[Anonymous Coward]

That was a little different though. In that case the company disregarded some of the policies set out in the API license. The question becomes in that case more whether lisense is legal or not, rather then how evil microsoft is.

Ruling overturned the exclusion of Pei's prior Art

[morganew]

(Notice, we filed an Amicus brief on this case, and are happy with the court's finding because it matches our brief)

Specifically, the ruling overturned the district court's incorrect assertion that the Viola Web browser, and specifically DX34 was "abandoned suppressed or concealed" and therefore did not qualify as something that could be shown to the jury as an example of prior art.

To quote from today's ruling "The district court's conclusion inappropriately narrowed the definition of "invention" as used in section 102(g)"

The court goes on to note that a change in version number does not necessarily constitute a new invention and that version DX37, which they tried to demo to the court, just represents an improved version of Wei's invention.

In our brief, we argued that that the intellectual property rights of all software developers must be protected, including those developers who wish to give their inventions away without charge.

Those who wish to donate their work to the "IP commons" to enlist others for help and feedback are not abandoning it for others to patent. Software developers often proactively choose to do this as an act of beneficence or as a part of their software development process. This was certainly the case for Pei-Yuan Wei, the inventor of the Viola browser that should be considered prior art to invalidate the Eolas patent.

Re:Patent For Sale?

[Zone-MR]

Yes, that's if they win the case, which they won't assuming the legal system has any hint of sanity. There's so much prior art out there, it should be trivial to invalidate the patent.

I have to agree with the parent poster. If I was Eolas, I'd sell it and make a guaranteed x million $'s. If MS was really evil, they'd buy the patent and demand royalties from competing browsers who can't afford the legal fees neccessary to challenge the patent.

Re:Did Microsoft really violate Eolas licensing?

[snwcrash]

Non-commercial isn't the same as Open Source. Almost every linux vendor could be considered commercial. And would the license issued be transferrable and all that? I'd want to see a better definition of the license terms rather than someones word before getting too excited about their kindness...