Slashdot Mirror
Supreme Court Rejects Microsoft Eolas Appeal
mixmasterjake writes "The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to hear a Microsoft appeal in the software company's ongoing Web browsing patent dispute with the University of California and Eolas Technologies. The dispute arises over the Eolas patent for 'a system allowing a user of a browser program ... to access and execute an embedded program object.' From the article: "With today's decision, the Supreme Court decided not to hear Microsoft's argument relating to how damages in the case should be calculated. Microsoft had been asking the court to reject a previous ruling that damages should be awarded based on Microsoft's U.S. and foreign sales, saying that the Eolas patent should only apply to U.S. products. The Supreme Court did not give a reason for its rejection of Microsoft's appeal."
Does this mean Microsoft will pay $bignum amount to Eolas?
Being a Justice on the Supreme Court is the best job ever. You can pick and choose which cases you want to hear, and you need offer no justification whatsoever!
And all the libs said Roberts was in the pocket of Big Business... Guess they were wrong?
I am not left-handed, either!
Microsoft gets to eat it's own medicine. Maybe they'll start to realize how bad software patents really are. Patents aren't an universal tool that should be used in every field of science.
has to be reformed. Such a basic idea shouldn't be patentable, even when it costs a giant like Microsoft.
Microsoft had already been dealt a $520.6 million judgement in the case two years ago
How much does Microsoft clear in profit every month, over one billion dollars? This isn't much money to them.
Bradley Holt
Yet another application of the "maybe if we ignore the problem, the problem will go away itself" mantra the government loves so much. However, I'm not sure whether this case would have allowed the court to tackle software patents.
Ok, this is Slashdot, and therefore anything that Microsoft does is supposed to be bad. But, I still can't bring myself to embrace obvious software patents. I did RTFA, but I have not looked at the patent itself -- so perhaps it isn't obvious. Still, I can't help but think this does not bode well for the internet in general.
Sure MS has strong-armed some competitors in the past and probably stolen an idea or two (Stac compression comes to mind), but I would have preferred to see the patent overturned...
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
I run Gentoo Linux, how does this affect me?
Allow me to compile an answer for you. Please check back in 7 hours.
From the brief /. description (I know, I didn't RTFA :-( ) it sounds like they patented a security flaw... I wanna patent a security flaw.
*Rushes to the PO to patent buffer overflows*
Please don't call them libs. Us Libertarians don't want to be associated with socialists.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Eolas hacked the supreme court to force a ruling :P
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Both of which routinely suggest actions you can take to try to turn this thing around.
How did you know how he voted on whether to take the case or not? I don't see it anywhere in the article.
And us liberals don't want to be associated with nutjob anarchists.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
42
Perhaps he was using "libs" to mean "liberals" instead of "Libertarians"?
My Systems
Eolas's patent, which covers web browser plugins, should never have been awarded -- let alone validated by the USPTO. As it stands, no browser that supports plugin technology is immune from Eolas, a one-man-show run by a university professor.
The patent needs to be thrown out immediately; the amount of prior art must be staggering.
For the future of the web, this is a case you'll want Microsoft to win, ultimately.
I say this as someone who is no fan of Microsoft, and who is actually a student at the University of California--Microsoft's loss is bad for open source. Microsoft was simply the biggest fish Eolas could go after. Now they're going to demand royalties from all other browser makers, which could spell big trouble for Mozilla.
... to access and execute an embedded program object." Sounds like it would cover browser support for Java and perhaps JavaScript embedded in web pages.
I hope I'm wrong--please tell me this isn't going to kill open source web browsers.
The UC/Eolas patent covers "a system allowing a user of a browser program
Crap.
Are other browsers going to be effected by this as well? Apple for Safari, Opera, Mozilla / FireFox... What are the widespread implications of this?
Ars has better coverage.
It's a bit confusing, but as I understand things, this is the story: Eolas were awarded big damages against Microsoft based on their browser plugin patent. This patent was overturned in March 2004, which means Microsoft no longer had to pay those damages. Micosoft's appeal to SCOTUS was against those damages that it doesn't have to pay any more. So, I imagine the SCOTUS were like "WTF?" when they declined to hear the case.
Microsoft's not totally insane, though, because the patent has been reinstated, so MS and Eolas will be going back to court, and MS might lose again and have to pay money again. So they were looking for a precedent to keep a lid on those damages which they might get.
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
all i have to say on this.. in this case microsoft is obviously the lessser of two evils. when the US economy and government finally collapse under the accrued debt.. i hope the framers of the next constitution require intro to computer science for political candidacy. The level of technological idiocy reflected in our judges and politicians has plummeted so far under the bottom of the barrel it's actually made its way several thousand feet into the chinese sky.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
This is my chance! Bad news for MicroSoft! All I have to do is act giddy, (and pretend that I don't care about the larger implications of the broken patent system), and I'll be modded up! w00t!
:(
And now, for my sarcastic insolence, I'll be modded down.
Maybe they'll cancel each other out?
FanFictionRecs.net
Maybe someone in Washington will Finally Fucking Notice (tm).
There is an interesting post at Right to Create that discusses Roberts and his penchant for being a strong IP-maximalist (in other words, a weak supporter of the freedom to create and invent), and points out that the Senate Judiciary Committee didn't ask him one question on this topic.
Ok,
in the eyes of the Courts, this question has long been settled. If I am remembering my Patent law correctly ( you patent lawyers out there please correct if wrong) trying to split the "outside world" from the U.S. is not considered, especially if those involved in the case are of U.S. "citizenship."
This is to prevent someone from using someone else's patent for profit overseas.
Looks like Microsoft needs some more/better patent attorneys...
According to this he did not take part in the decision.
- tlf
They have made their bed, and now they must lie in it. If they support software idea patents
then they must also be willing to pay dearly to those who will do nothing but litigate
using them.
Sooner or later even these big companies must realise that it is more expensive in the long
haul to support software patents when there are constantly more and more companies that
don't make anything and are only out to litigate; and since crosslicensing with them is
useless, since they don't make anything, all they can do is constantly pay up.
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
Being a Microsoft CEO is the best job ever! You can pick and choose what customer complaints you want to listen to and disregard all others without any justification whatsoever
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
One could assume he had some weight in the decision since his robe has the cool stripes and everyone else has the lame ones.
Plus, everyone mistakenly thinks it's the highest court in the land.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
And us anarchists don't want to be associated with reactionary liberals.
If you guys want to defend the Right To Copy (or, at best, the Right To Modify) knock yourselves out. But could you at least drop the pretense that you're defending "the freedom to create and invent"? You have utter contempt for *real* creation and invention, of things that are *new*.
Nice catch!
Wow, thanks for the link! I was wrong.
I am not left-handed, either!
I run Gentoo Linux, how does this affect me?
Actually, it affects any system running any browser. If the validity of EOLAS patent is confirmed in court - and it looks quite possible right now - all modern browsers will have to be rewritten to avoid patent infringement. This means also that majority of websites will have to be redesigned in one way or another. So even if you use Lynx as your only web surfing tool - you are affected. Don't take the sectarian attitude "when Microsoft has problems it's always good news".
Except that Renquist added those stripes for his own pleasure. Roberts does not have the stripes on his robe.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
Not having Miers there to shake things up, might or might not have made a difference. Just goes to show that having the RIGHT friends on capitol hill can make a hell of a difference. Too bad though I guess now when I embed php and use an xml object I will have to pay Eolas some kind of tax.....not. What a pile of shit patent anyway. Though it might cause a re-write Microsofts embeded features like IE updates and some of there web scripts. Might even help make things more secure for a change. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.
"I'm with Microsoft on this one". Patents on software and business practises are the greater evil here.
However with Microsoft's extensive patent portfolio, I wonder just how hard they're trying with this case. Perhaps they intend to lose in order to set a legal precedent for software patents. Maybe Eolas has offerred them several key patents if they 'take one for the team', that would both make Eolas rich(er) and allow MS to pursue litigation against other firms.
Let's face it, if MS did start defending all its patents and winning, they would manage to close down just about every small software house left.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
So much for a pro-corporate Supreme Court. Maybe they're more pro-theocrats than anything. You get what you pay for I guess.
This story is really about the invidious patenting of ideas rather than actual inventions. Such patenting of software processes is not about protecting intellectual property or a partuclar working design of some new gizmo.
The entire point of software patents like this is to stifle innovation by preventing anybody, including Microsoft, from reverse engineering the process by any means. That's not patenting because you have a product on the market that you're trying to protect, it's a form of intellectual highway robbery by digging a big hole in the road and then charging people to cross the hole using the one bridge and the police preventing people from going around the hole.
As far as Microsoft is concerned, I feel no sympathy. Microsoft has aggressively tried to corner and stifle competition by collecting as many of these software or business process patents as it can. Now it gets bitten by somebody else doing the same thing. "He who lives by the software patent also get shafted by the software patent"
Microsoft should be like Earl: call it "karma" and seek to redress people for what it has done. But first, Bill Gates needs to get caught in a hit-and-run accident while holding a winning scratch card.
Unless there is urgent action to void these "business process through software" patents, then it will be the rest of the world, China, India and especially Europe which will benefit from innovation and not the US. In America, software patents are causing the pace of innovation to slow while costing eveybody more money, and jamming up the Patent system with these mendatious patent claims.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
when exactly will slashdot disallow all comments entitled "MOD PARENT $value" it's not coming fast enough
In Soviet Russia, Big Business is in pocket of YOU!
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
"Microsoft had been asking the court to reject a previous ruling that damages should be awarded based on Microsoft's U.S. and foreign sales, saying that the Eolas patent should only apply to U.S. products. The Supreme Court did not give a reason for its rejection of Microsoft's appeal"
Here's a good reason for you: as a US company, you should abide by US patent law, even if you sell overseas. Just because the business is done outside the US does not mean it's exempt from patent protections.
Microsoft above all should be aware of this sort of thing--it's exactly like the tactics they were using with Lee going to work for Google. Washington (the state) would say "He can't go right to work there", and California would say "Come on in, here's your desk".
All your base are belong to us?
When exactly will Slashdot disallow all comments replies to a parent entitled "MOD PARENT $value"? Whenever it comes, and whenever the built-in grammar checker comes, they're not coming fast enough.
A lot of people want to reform the patent system (including MS) so that this type of obvious abuse of the system isn't so serious. I think what the guys at Right to Create are saying is that band-aiding a broken system might not be the best solution, but they'll push for that if that's all they can get.
EOLAS wins, the patent is theirs, period. Microsoft owes..... ...yes, I know, a paranoid delusion.....
As part of settlement, Microsoft buys patent and/or Eolas.....
Microsoft holds patent, everyone is screwed....
The Chief Justice doesn't choose cases for the Court. A "yes" vote from any four justices is enough for the Court to hear the case. The parties petition, and 4 justices have to vote yes for a case to be granted cert.
The Chief Justice does, however, lead the discussion leading to decision, and, if in the majority, choose who writes the opinion. So, the Chief is not without sway, and usually leads like-minded judges.
The earlier post which said it's the best job ever was half right: you might still have to hear a case if you don't want to, but you never have to write a sentence unless you take the opinion for yourself.
And, a little more knowledge for the curious, Chief Justices usually try to put a 'theme' to their tenure. For example, Earl Warren's was "Person liberty" and Rehnquist's was "States' rights" or "States' dignity." It'll be interesting to see where Roberts goes.
IANAL...y.
I'm no lawyer, so I may be wrong.
You probably know of one patent, the Eolas "browser plug in" patent, which threatens to kill every known web browser out there. And you probably know that Microsoft is fighting the patent, because it's being sued. And that everyone went about it the wrong way.
So (given I have not even read the actual patent details) I thought "wait, there's this function in Unix called 'dlopen' that is commonly used in Netscape and Mozilla to load in plugins. It's even described that way. Where does it date back to?"
A google search results in a Nov 16th, 1995 Sun Microsystems document describing a bug in SunOS 4.1.4's dlopen() call.
The patent was awarded in 1998. dlopen() existed since late 1995, at least two, if not three, years before the patent.
Whoops! I belive we got prior art from Sun! Quick, someone sue the Patent Office with this evidence!
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
His theme will fall in line with GWB's: "Create Totalitarian State".
Roberts who answered very little in his Senate Confirmation hearings, did mention he was open to the idea of either getting rid of the 'cert pool' concept and/or increasing the courts caseload each year.
Lynx doesn't even support plugins. And you could simply remove plugin support and be done with it, it's not like anyone ever uses them for anything productive. I don't think it even applies to Mozilla extensions, since they aren't even binaries, for the most part.
Sounds like some h4x0r got control of the supremecourt process.
[*] The first patent on the technology was taken out in 1980. Since that time, roughly 40 academic publications have been authored showing ways to vastly improve the technology. Five or so additional patents had been granted in the 1990s. The implementation I used infringed none of these patents, except perhaps for a claim or two of the patent that was issued in 1980 and had since expired.
The Right to Copy? Hardly.
Libertarians are liberals, well anywhere else in the world except the US.
Being a Slashdot editor is the best job ever! You can pick and choose what submissions you want to post and disregard all others without any justification whatsoever!
...Stac compression comes to mind...
Years before Stack existed I was using PowerPacker on my Amiga 500 to compress and decompress files transparently to the filesystem. So even before Stac the idea had prior art.
Shh.
Being an anonymous loser is the best job ever! You can pick your butt, post what you find online and disregard bad karma :)
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
libertarians are basically social liberals and fiscal conservatives- the best parts of the republican and democratic parties. no wasting money on pointless and wasteful social programs, no old fashioned moral guidelines. we arent anarchists. we just believe that the government doesnt need to be so involved in every nook and cranny of our everyday lives OR our wallets.
PLEASE read up on this
http://www.lp.org/
He doesn't run a dictatorship in the court. If you look at the Chief Justice's job description, it's not that much more than the Associate Justices'. If he were as powerful as it was implied, there wouldn't be much point in having other justices.
What then is the highest court in the land? I think Microsoft would like to know right now.
I run Gentoo Linux, how does this affect me?
If you're using a browser to access this website right now, it affects you.
Even their recent patenting frenzy can't protect them against people who have nothing to loose.
Microsoft could definitely die from a thousand small wounds (and a 500 million US$ lawsuit is not a small wound, even for them).
AC
Some analysis and context is usually beneficial to all. I've seen other commenters say that they haven't seen the original patent. I always find it helpful to read as many original source documents as possible although it's obvious that some people don't agree that it's important or useful information.
Yes. If you had thought of that 20 years ago, we WOULD owe you millions.
The justices may be too busy to hear every case, but it *is* interesting that both this case and the Blackberry patent case both came up before them within a week, and they refused to hear both.
In the Blackberry case, RIM wasn't even able to get a stay pending appeal. Microsoft has been granted every stay they ever asked for.
So what's going on here. Do the Supremes just think bad patents are not their responsibility?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Of all the S.C. Hearings in a year they only entertain 1% of appeals.
"Booze, Hookers and the Lash"? What am I doing in this handbasket?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This case is, in my opinion, a huge bit of theatrics. Microsoft wants to lose this case, and here is why:
This patent, if enforced, would provide Microsoft a $500 million penalty for the ENFORCEMENT of plugins not being a possibility for browsers unless licensing is paid.
What would this mean? Well, you could kiss your Flash, Java VM, etc. goodbye! Not only that, but Firefox would have to block plugins like that as well!
Yes, as you can see, that would be a wet dream for Microsoft. The ability to dictate exactly what functionality is in IE, with the excuse of patents as an excuse.
So if Microsoft totally botches this case and sets up legal precident for Eolas to have this patent, you'll know why. They WANT It there. It's all part of their IP war against Linux, Firefox, and all things good and holy. (tm).
Microsoft: always playing the system. Never innovating. Might makes right!
The Bush Administration established the Court of God. If God tells you to do it (like invade Iraq), then you must.
Well, if you are a profitable business, the only way to evade income tax is to temporarily transfer profits to someone else, right ? Hints:
- License your own patents from an off-shore subsidiary in a tax haven.
- Or get sued by a fellow oligopolist, settle for a huge amount, and make sure you have a secret agreement so they'll return the favour later.
This explanation makes sense in a lot of patent cases, but frankly I don't think this is what's happening between Microsoft and UCLA. In order to repay MS, they'd have to purchase a million copies of Windows.
AC
Sometimes they mean "women's libbers" too.
The right just loves to make up names.
The rest of us stopped that around the 3rd grade.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
What if there was a way to patent something, but waive all right to sue for patent infringment, essentially freeing the concept for everyone?
"Jesus freaks", "gun nuts"... You're blind if you think it's just the Right.
...if only I had that Anonymous Coward's picture right now. I know some people here know what I can do with GIMP and that Impact font...
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Parent is correct. GP is sourcing old info. Mods, as usual, on crack.
The reason is that Miers isn't going to be bringing her personal insights to her hearing of the case, so they'd actually have to decide against Microsoft.
--
make install -not war
I wasn't being offensive, however the word liberal has become tainted in the US since the Reagan Administration. Real smart man Reagan was, lets cut taxes, but lets not cut spending.
"Ha Ha!" - Nelson Muntz
What then is the highest court in the land? I think Microsoft would like to know right now.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the highest court of all?" Oh- it's us!!!" - Microsoft
Congress. since it has the power to overturn supreme court rulings. Of course, no congress has had the guts to try since marbury v. madison.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
They're not supposed to follow the law in their decisions, they're supposed to decide whether or not the law is right.
Except, it is the highest court in the land.
No congress has the right to judicial review. In the history of this country, it has not been excercised. Kind of like the vice president almost never actually presides over the senate.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Most people really underestimate the significance of this refusal of the US Supreme Court to hear MSFT's appeal. At this point it's not about Eolas or MSFT, it's about the fundamental question of whether a patent governs only a target market into which you sell or where a product/process is used (that's the way it used to be and should be) or also the originating market from which a technology is exported. With the logic behind that Eolas ruling, even a European software company (which SAP is in formal terms, although no longer practically) could be potentially sued now over the infringement of a US patent in Europe if it has some US-based operation that may have somehow been involved in the creation of the product.
The logic in patent law is that you can be sued for contributory infringement, such as for supplying a product (or a component of a product) to someone who then commits the infringement. However, the logic has so far been that the actual infringement, i.e. the one to which someone contributes by supplying a product or component, would be a question of applicable patent law in the location of such actual infringement. In this particular case, the actual infringements occur when people sell or use the MS Internet Explorer in Europe, and that should be a matter of European patent law. Otherwise the provision of a master disk to a subsidiary or vendor in territory B (target market) could already be governed under the patent law of territory A (originating market).
Note that 64% of the damage award to Eolas relates to overseas sales (roughly $300M out of $500M total), and obviously a major chunk of that is Europe. The EU has 460 million inhabitants and represents about 25% of the Gross Global Product.
The US has great stuff to export, but please keep your patent system where it is! We really don't want it.
It's not like a trademark where they need to constantly defend it from everyone. The patent is Eolas' property, and they can say, without problems "microsoft must pay, but firefox need not". And that's basically what they've said in the past.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
i think i've got it!
if you patent something you should license it out-of-the-box or make it clear that you will be collecting license fees in the future. if a patented invention/method has been widely used without the previous conditions attatched or any attempts to collect fees (JPG,filesystem,etc.) then you shouldnt be able to switch on the license fee/lawsuit when you feel like it.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
If at first you don't succeed, pay to have the law changed. MS has enough money to achieve this, and have it worded to suit them.
As it stands, no browser that supports plugin technology is immune from Eolas, a one-man-show run by a university professor.
But this is not reason enough to kill the patent on the current system. The main reason to kill the patent is that pluggable systems have been around for ages. It's a well known design pattern. This is just applying the concept of plugin to a web browser which also previously existed.
The Supreme Court did not give a reason for its rejection of Microsoft's appeal.
And they (almost) never do. Unlike appeals to Circuit courts, there is no right of appeal to the Supreme Court. Rather, a losing appellant in a Circuit court must petition the Supreme Court for certiorari (for an order directing the Circuit court to send them the record for review). The vast majority of these petitions are denied, the Court taking up only those cases raising important questions of law, and then only after there is a conflict among the Circuits or a matter of great public interest.
It takes four justices to grant cert. Petitions are routinely granted or denied in an order listing cases, although sometimes a dissent is written.
Either that, or Ginsburg's Word keeps crashing, Thomas's spell check doesn't work....
Pay up MS.
This is my sig.
Yep. That is what I meant. It has been a long while since patent laws were reviewed. I think, if reviewed again, they should only be changed to allow fair use of the patents. What is fair? well, that is a difficult question, but I am sure we can find an imperfect answer which is better than the current state.
"From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen" - Cat Stevens
No they don't.
They have the power to REWRITE the law, but that is not the same as oveerturning the Supreem Court.
I understand the argument you are trying to make, but you're overstating things a bit.
Well, the Supreme Court isn't a congress. The United States Congress, however, is a congress. The United States Supreme Court is a court. Congress's only control over the court system is the confirmation of judges to various courts, and the ability to set up any courts lower than the Supreme Court.
Unless, of course, you left out your comma, and meant to say that Congress has the right to judicial review. In which case, you would be wrong. Article III of the United States Constitution strictly grants all judicial powers to the Supreme Court of the United States. And if you think that the power of Review has never been used, well, you need to brush up on your history.
Correct. In the late 1800s, congress passed a law taxing incomes. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress did not have that power. The only way to overrule that decision was to amend the constitution. Thus, the Sixteenth Amendment. Took almost 50 years...
I hope this will be a wake up call for the IT industry to understand that patents are NOT their friend.
s way of doing things, because they think it's in their advantage, as they have the legal resources to defend themselves. For example Microsoft has been a very strong proponent of pushing the EU governments to change their patent system to become the same type of joke as in the US.
Now, many of the biggest companies in the IT industry has supported this kind of patent-everything-even-if-common-sense-and-obviou
However, they are wrong.
Patents are like Nuclear Weapons.
With the difference, that *anybody* can have them.
Now, imagine if the world is full of nuclear weapons, not just a few major states, but every jack, joe, or your nearest fanatic terrorist.
Yup... If the terrorist tries to blow up your country, you're a static target. You can't hide, you have everything to lose.
However, if a large country wants to use their nuclear weapons to kill a terrorist..... Yup... no luck, unless they'd be willing to nuke the *whole world* into oblivion (including themselves).
Patents are like that. The ones who will *really* gain from it, is the junk patent industry, which has been growing like mad this last years.
Those are companies that just create patents, not in order to use them to create or market products or services, but just to blackmail other companies into paying them some protection money, or be sued and have to spend a ridiculous amount of money in court, even if they were sure to win. And since such companies do not have any real businesses or products, they can't even be sued back from patent breachs, so the target's arsenal of patents becomes as useless as the US nuclear weapons would be useless if a terrorist detonated a nuclear weapon there.
Big companies like Microsoft and IBM are just a few of the fattest cash cow in those people's hunting grounds.
I hope this will make them understand that patents are not their friend anymore then it's the little inventor's friends, and that this mess will get sorted out soon.
This case, plus last weeks refusal of the Supremes to consider the RIM appeal, have an interesting result.
In the RIM case, Microsoft has sided with NTP as in here and filed a "none-of-my-business, but" brief stating that they think patents from the US should be enforced worldwide. By refusing to hear the RIM appeal last week, the Supremes effectively backed up Microsoft on this.
Now by refusing to hear Microsoft's appeal on Eolas, the Supremes have again asserted (this time contrary to Microsoft's wishes) that patents from the US should be enforced worldwide.
Fascinating precedents, and an interesting support of US IP hegemony.
page 60: "Assuming arguendo that one adopts the alternate broader modern construction where "interpreting a script" may be considered as equivalent to "executing an application" then the viola script arguably becomes an integral component of the viola browser that parses, interprets, and executes each line of the script. In such case, the browser and the "executable application" merge into one program and therefore cannot meet the requirement for a discrete "browser application" and a discrete "executable application" as claimed by the instant '906 patent."
ActiveX controls are provided through DLLs. As noted in the court of appeals footnote 3: "An example of a DLL is spell check; a DLL is a component that can run only within another application." My interpretation, given the above notes, is that the DLL would become an integral component of the browser and in such case, the browser and the executable application would merge into one program, and therefore cannot meet the requirements for a discrete browser application and a discrete executable application as claimed by the instant 906 patent.
Maybe, but the left doesn't have TV and radio show hosts for their name-calling.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
somehow, Reagan was the "greatest conservative" of all time...
:$8,000,000,000,000
s .html
s /overview-1.jpg
He was very conservative in is tripling of the national debt...
I swear, if we keep conserving like this, we'll be broke!
National Debt before Reagan: $1,000,000,000,000
National Debt after Reagan: $3,300,000,000,000
Then, of course, was nutjob liberal crazy-ass socialist Clinton:
National Debt before Clinton:$4,400,000,000,000
National Debt after Clinton:$5,600,000,000,000
Then, the latest "great conservative" "best-since-Reagan" president
National Debt before Bush II:$5,600,000,000,000
National Debt today
And Bush still has three years left. At the current rate, we'll pick up about another $1,500,000,000,000 before he leaves office, putting us at about $9.5 trillion.
So, the liberals tax us to death and then spend all our money on crap. The conservatives, on the other hand, don't tax us much at all -- and then spend *even more* than the liberals.
The problem is, just the interest on our debt $174 billion/year. By 2010, the estimate is over $310 billion. And that estimate is done by the white house.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/table
Compared with a current budget of $2.2 trillion dollars, that means that interest payments will increase by about 55% to about 15% of the total annual budget! At some point, we'll stop having any money for anything except interest payments -- you'll notice I didn't include any principle payments here -- because that seems not to have a line-item on the budget. But then, why pay off the debt, when you can just incur more!
meanwhile: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/image
That graph claims that Bush has showed great restraint, decreasing "non-security" spending. Who decides what's security? Is throwing a big $25,000,000 party a "security expense" just because the Dept. of Homeland Security "paid" the bill?
No, Microsoft loves the idea of software patents -- it's the only defense they have against open source (in the long run).
I think Microsoft is fighting Eolas for two reasons. First, if they lost, Eolas could demand a continuing royalty from MS, which would amount to admitting a legal encumbrance on Windows. MS would hate that.
And second, MS is perhaps hoping to bankrupt Eolas by litigation, then take over the patent and use it as a huge hammer against open source.