Slashdot Mirror
USPTO Reexam Finds $521M Eolas Patent Valid
theodp writes "As predicted earlier on Slashdot, looks like the W3C goofed by shutting out the public and asking the Patent Office to base its reexamination of the Eolas Web Plug-In Patent solely on prior art promoted by Microsoft. The USPTO has reaffirmed the validity of the $521M patent, rejecting the W3C's prior art as deficient for not demonstrating the capability of ongoing real-time manipulation and control by the user. The USPTO also considered but rejected the prior art of the Viola Browser, which formed the basis for Microsoft's appellate argument. Ironically, Eolas' defense was bolstered by the arguments of its expert witness, 2005 EFF Pioneer Award Winner Ed Felten."
while I've heard rumors of Eolas vowing not to go after FOSS infringers -- like Mozilla
If they were truly serious about that, they would allow FOSS projects to go to them for a free license that doesn't expire and is valid whilever the code is licensed under a FOSS license (if a project holds the copyright to all the code, they can re-license it). Seeings how this hasn't been done, they're obviously not very serious about not going after FOSS infringers.