Epicrealm Uses Vague Patents to sue Web Sites

An anonymous reader writes "InfoSpinner/epicRealm holds two patents that basically describe every dynamic Web site in existence and is now using them to sue companies like eHarmony. This patent seems to describe a standard web/application server setup. This one describes 'dynamically generating a Web page in response to the request, the Web page including data dynamically retrieved from one or more data sources.' If enforced, these patents could shut down almost every dynamic site on the Internet, including the USPTO."

Comments

Re:Paying for use of other patents...

[IHateSlashDot]

Those patents just represent known "prior art". They are essentiallly patents that are related to the described invention. There is abosolutely no implication that the current patent uses the technologies described in the "prior art".

In fact, it just the opposite. Any claims that would already be covered would not be allowed in the current patent. So they do not need to pay anything for the other patents referenced since their invention has been found to be different from all of those.

Of course, they do not need to pay anything to reference OLE.

Re:USPTO can't be sued for infringement...

[daremonai]

See United States Code Title 28, Part IV, Chapter 91, Section 1498. This actually covers the claim procedures when the government makes use of a patent, but if you use this to key some Google searches, you'll get plenty of background on what it is about.

Re:RTFP (Read The Fine Patent)

[jevvim]

I was doing this in 1997. The patent is dated 1999.

And the patent application was filed on April 23, 1996. "Prior art" must predate the filing date (04/23/1996), not the date the patent was granted (04/13/1999).

Re:But, they licensed it out...

[Svartalf]

You completely missed the point- because you are looking solely at the patent and naught else because you apparently think you know more than someone who WORKED for these people in the past.

You don't know how they accomplished what they did- you couldn't have, dude. It was the patents that covered epicRealm's content delivery network- and it was Squid that was used to accomplish the same. By the way, they're not patenting dynamic page generation per se, only cached thereof- and as such, you'd need a cobbled up Squid or something similar to accomplish it along with a hacked together DNS server network and telemetry transponder network.

I know, I was one of the people working on the modifications they made to accomplish it. As for unlicensing things, you don't get to re-license the stuff if you breach the agreement, they were substantively in breach of the licensing grant given by the GPL in 2000. They continued to distribute systems that included this code throughout at least 2001 and 2002 before apparently ceasing operations (They pulled the signs from the building they were operating out of and their website went black around that timeframe...)