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."

Comments

Very disappointing

[blane.bramble]

From the point of view of his cash flow...

Re:Very disappointing

[amliebsch]

Exactly. The summary doesn't make it clear that he is saying that the changes are not required because Microsoft could simply pay them for the privilege of not changing it. I say, you sue somebody for doing something, you forfeit your right to complain when they stop doing it!

No, What's A Shame Is

[Naked Chef]

the completely broken patent and copyright system in the U.S. that allows such ridiculous lawsuits to happen in the first place, which encourages companies like Microsoft to file thousands of "defensive" patents per year, exacerbating the problem. But nobody can figure out what stifles innovation....hmm.

Re:No, What's A Shame Is

[0xdeadbeef]

Damn you, you overflowed my ignore list. Now I must find the least vacuous contrarian to remove.

Re:No, What's A Shame Is

[Jtheletter]

I've gotta say, I don't really see the innovation yet being stifled. [...] Maybe the fact that people can't 'innovate' tiny little changes to other people's ideas is forcing creativity to higher levels.

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. :(

Re:No, What's A Shame Is

[johansalk]

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.

I hope this one is over with soon...

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

This whole case makes me feel violated. Not only is it a patent-troll case, but it's one that makes me side with Microsoft on something. I feel so unclean...

Is this a bad thing?

[hudson007]

Is making ActiveX harder to use a bad thing? "By Microsoft's own admission, IE users will only be able to interact with Microsoft ActiveX controls loaded in certain Web pages after manually activating their user interfaces by clicking on it or using the Tab and Enter keys."

Re:Is this a bad thing?

[hal9000(jr)]

Is making ActiveX harder to use a bad thing?

Yeah, it is. Forcing users to manually approve every control just reinforces the reactive "Click OK" mentality that enables other bad shit to happen.

Asks why change?

[nolife]

What I read...
Why would they change? They should just pay us and our layers instead. If they don't pay, we may actually have to take a risk and develop something based on our patent or we will go broke. So yes America, and all that is reading our press release, Microsoft is bad, not us. Repeat that 10 times to as many people as you know and it will eventually become the truth.

Fools

[YrWrstNtmr]

There is no court order forcing Microsoft to do anything. Anything that is being done is of Microsoft's own choosing,'

You sued them, and apparently won, resulting in two paths of action for Microsoft. Stop the infringing activity, or pay you to be allowed to continue.

They indeed made a choice. Too bad it wasn't the one you wanted.

the end of activex?

[radical_dementia]

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.

Re:Interesting comments, so far.

[Sneftel]

Probably, and then the same people here would in that instance not side with Microsoft. None of the comments here are "Microsoft is in the right here, and therefore we must agree with everything they do forever". It IS possible to support a position rather than an entity.

Don't Cheer for MS

[algae]

It seems like by taking this action, Microsoft is actually *reenforcing* the validity of software patents. Yes, bully to them for refusing to pay licensing, but by dropping the disputed technology, Microsoft is tacitly admitting that the patent is valid.

Of course that makes total sense, giving the MS is patenting software techniques left and right, and has reserved the right to sue Free Software distributors over it. If they can get e.g. RedHat to devote person-hours to removing patented algorithms from their distribution, then that's time and money that they're essentially forcing RedHat to throw out the window.

Not only Microsoft

[ray-auch]

It isn't just the microsoft fee.

Since IE is (unfortunately) the defacto standard browser, others (if they infringe at all) will follow the lead, and Microsoft will take all the pain of getting web developers to change to cope with the changes.

The Eolas guy is annoyed because MS routed around his toll bridge, and now everyone else will see the way to go round too, and all his future revenues just evaporated.

Re:Not only Microsoft

[errxn]

...others (if they infringe at all) will follow the lead...

The only problem with this is that Eolas has freely admitted that they are not going to go after any other browser, only IE. As Mozilla, et. al gain popularity and market share, the possibility exists that we'll have a further fracturing of an already splintered HTML/Javascript implementation across browsers.

One question I have is whether Microsoft has any sort of case against Eolas for discriminatory behavior or extortion, since Eolas has admittedly singled them out. Obviously, IANAL.

Then again, there's always the wishful thinking that Eolas will realize that they're never gonna get a penny out of their predatory patent, give up, and release it to the public domain. Yeah, wishful thinking.

Of *course* it's a shame, for Eolas

[Xeger]

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.