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Eolas COO Says IE Changes A Shame
capt turnpike writes "Hot on the heels of Microsoft's announcement of a 60-day period in which Web developers will have to change their pages' architecture, the COO of Eolas, the company whose suit forced these changes, gives an interview to eWEEK.com in which he says these changes are a disappointment. Confused? From the article: 'There is no court order forcing Microsoft to do anything. Anything that is being done is of Microsoft's own choosing,' His position is that publicizing these forced changes strengthens MS's case."
or something like that.
As much as I dislike Microsoft I am glad they told those patent lizards to take a hike.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
> Eolas Chief Operating Officer Mark Swords called on the software maker to purchase a patent license instead of worsening the browsing experience.
Gee, who would've guessed they're interesting in selling a patent license...
Hopefully MS' actions here will put a damper on all those ludicrous patents and their holders to collect.
I hope Eolas spent a bundle on litigation and gets nothing in return. That'll teach them.
On a computer or under a hood.
"Some guy's suit forced MS to make changes of their own choosing which will cause web developers to change their architecture which are a dissapointment, yet strengthen MS's case."
What changes are the dissapointment? What the hell are you talking about? How about a link or two, or using a word other than "change"?
Yeah, I know. -1, Offtopic
I've gotta say, I don't really see the innovation yet being stifled. Maybe it's a foregone conclusion, and maybe I'm just missing something, but things do seem to be proceeding apace. Honestly, it all seems a bit 'Chicken Little' to me.
Maybe the fact that people can't 'innovate' tiny little changes to other people's ideas is forcing creativity to higher levels.
I have nothing to back my opinions up, unfortunately, but I also have nothing refute them.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I think perhaps one reason they are avoiding buying a patent license is because they are planning on doing away with activex. I've already heard the xmlhttprequest used for Ajax will be built in to IE7 and not as an activex control. Its possible other things like Flash and Acrobat will do the same.
Those of us out there who advocate Firefox should take this as a great opportunity.
Currently there are only 186 hits in google for the term "Click to activate and use this control".
If everyone here with a blog or similar puts up a post with that line, and says something to the effect that 'the best solution for this problem is to download firefox, as webmasters are never going to update all the sites out there', there's got to be a whole new batch of potential converts who get auto-updated and then think "Oh noes, what is this, I'll google..."
Just a thought.
I have read 5 articles on this whole thing now. I still am not sure exactly what it is that Eolas has patented... the ability to run activeX without clicking an extra button? or something about havign external applications of any kind able to process content inside the browser window? Can anyone explain?
Also, I found this quote from Eolas:
"We released our browser back in 1995 to the world free for non-commercial use, so that should be an indicator to people that the open-source community shouldn't have anything to fear from us. "
Does Firefox/mozilla use any of the disputed technology? I would guess not if it's only ActiveX we're dealing with, but I'm not sure.. quicktime and realplayer were mentioned in one article. Any then I wonder, if Eolas really won't go after open source projects that use their tech, then could Firefox be outfitted to do exactly what IE will no longer be able too, and so then save people the trouble of redesigning all these sites?
-Lod
This has nothing to do with a lack of creativity or inventiveness on the inventor's part, this has to do with broad and vague patents that cover too much, or too obvious things. In addition the entire patent space is comepltely cluttered with these sorts of things making sorting out relevance from the noise frustrating, time consuming and expensive.
Being an engineer I've had quite a few ideas for new things, one of the biggest problems I have faced is trying to determine if it's even worth applying for a patent or spending time developing it. Unlike a huge corporation my funds are very limited, so I don't have an extra $1,000++ to just take a shot at patenting something that may not even be accepted, or even worse - is accepted but is later found to infringe on someone else's overly broad patent. Have you ever tried to research existing patents to determine if something you've come up with is new? Not only is it time consuming and difficult, the language of the patents makes it nearly impossible to figure out if something applies even when you think you may have found a hit. The solution is to hire a patent company/attorney to do the search for you, but now we're talking easily $150/hr in fees for the service, and on top of that your patent needs to be worded in the same obfuscated legalease to have a chance at actually providing your idea with protection.
Innovation is being stifled by the sharp increase in barriers to entry. I've looked into it and just applying for a patent and including search and support costs it easily costs $2500 on the cheap end. Sure you could just pay the patent office fees and give them what you've come up with on your own but you'd basically be throwing your money away since in all likelyhood you will need some sort of councel to get it through the system.
All of these huge corporations filing "defensive" patents is making it so difficult/expensive that the individual inventor who doesn't already have business funding capital is pretty much out of luck. :(
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
Consider Microsoft's alternatives:
(1) Continue to infringe on Eolas' patent. Eventually Eolas will sue again, causing MSFT to pay more damages.
(2) Buy a license from Eolas.
(3) Change IE so it no longer infringes. Pay Eolas nothing.
You see, #1 and #2 would make Eolas money. #3 makes Eolas no money. In this light, could we expect Eolas' executives to say anything else about Microsoft's decision? Apparently, they're not happy with $520 million -- and their attitude to Microsoft's decision to work around the patent tells us all we need to know about Eolas' motivations.
This is a shakedown for money, pure and simple. It's yet another abuse of the patent system. They'll take MSFT for as much as they can, and anything MSFT does to stop loss, Eolas will regard as "unfortunate."
I'm not a big fan of Microsoft -- but if a thief steals from an tyrant, that doesn't make the thief's transgression any less severe or more permissible.
They're trivial *now* because the patentees taught you their inventions. Thankfully, the system doesn't work the way you'd like it to, otherwise everything would be obvious.
Love it or hate it, IE is the currently most used browser. And this is one of the significant features of it. Since Eolas has no competing product, why do they deserve a penny? They can't show any damages. They can't show that they sold their idea to someone else who Microsoft ran out of business. All they can do is say we'll prevent the Internet from being a more convenient place unless we're paid lots of money.
I'm sorry that Eolas is sad that Microsoft is going to byte the bullet and dodge their patent. Wrong! I'm actually not sorry at all!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I have experience relevant to what you said since a few years ago I was in your situation, the lone inventor. Please allow me to tell you what I think about it.
First of all, if you thought the situation now is difficult, then just imagine what it would be like had the "barriers to entry" been, let's assume for a second, eliminated. What you'd then have is every "bright" kid and his "my-kid-is-bright" mom filing a patent; then really talk about patents that are too many and too broad. Now don't anyone tell me that's a good thing and creativity will spring up from it, nonsense. Even when you're someone with considerable postgrad expertise and have a creative routine you'd be amazed at how way too often it seems that every "original" thing you come up with had already been discussed and dissected at length in some volume somewhere in far more detail than you'd imagined, sometimes even tens of years ago. We're not in the stone age, prior art is vast now and any considerable invention these days requires a considerable expertise. Barriers to entry should be prohibitive enough to weed out the nonsense.
Second, if you thought filing a patent was costly, then I'll assume you've never tried to bring anything to market. The costs of patenting something pale in comparison to bringing a new thing to market. Now don't anyone tell me that having a patent will enable you to bring it to market, I'll say you've never been there. The truth is that even with a patent it is very difficult. Established companies have their set ways and own interests, they're fighting to survive against their competitors and can't be distracted by yet-another-invention from yet-another-weirdo, and even if you eventually persuade them that it's a good thing they're more likely to fight against you than for you. Also, most capital is very conservative and shies from anything untested in the marketplace. Useful does not always mean profitable. Answer me this, why should you be given exclusive rights to something that you can't bring to the people?
Then again, let's go back to basics. What was the intention of the patent law? It wasn't so someone from his bedroom can stalk the people over his "inventions", nor that more people invent more. The original intention of the patent law was so that those with immense trade expertise accumulated and kept in secret (ie, big business) would share that expertise with the people. The patent law wasn't intended so that some guy in his pajamas would tell us how something is done, it was intended so that experts from a big business would have an incentive to write a few documents describing how something is done and share them with the people. Had there been no patents then big business would still continue to invent, only that they'd do it in secret.
If you're going to have patents, then patenting needs to be prohibitive enough, otherwise you shouldn't have any patents at all.
There's a saying in filmmaking; if you can't persuade someone to finance your film, you shouldn't be making it. I think it applies here too.
...but it is a very real problem. As soon as the company I work for started doing good business, we showed up on the radar of a whole pile of patent trolling companies. One company had a patent on storing customer subscription information in a "computer file". And we had to cough up the money. Currently we're under attack from another company that has a patent on notifying postal carriers to pick up packages "using a computer".
Patenting these "inventions" did not in any way help society. We came up with them ourselves without even a moment of thought. So did everyone else who does business today. And these patent troll companies just go around and extort money from anyone who becomes financially successful. They do it because the letter of the law supports them in doing so.
As an example of how ridiculous it is -- the threats we get aren't even because they know we're violating a patent. They just send a letter saying basically "you are using computers to do business, so we're pretty sure you're violating one of our patents. Cough up x dollars or prove you're not violating through a very expensive legal process". As long as they price the settlement less than the likely cost of the legal process, a business will usually have to pay up in the interest of their shareholders.
On the consumer side you may not see it as stifling innovation, because companies don't shut down, they pay up and move on. And they usually can't talk about it afterwards. But a real loss of time and money has taken place that would have otherwise gone to many better things... innovation, lower prices, better wages. This patent crap makes most companies less efficient, in the interest of a very few companies that don't even offer anything in the marketspace they hold their patents in. It's just bad, bad, bad.
Except Microsoft didn't "steal" anything, the patent is ridiculous, and the Eolas suit should've been thrown out.