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'Eolas' Browser Plug-in Patent Case Rises Again

Posted by Zonk on from the return-of-the-living-patent-case dept.

eldavojohn writes "A legal battle that has been around since 1999 and seemingly ended in 2005 now rears its head again. In a confusing move, the USPTO 'reissued a Microsoft patent last week covering the same concepts outlined in the Eolas patent and with wording mirroring that of the Eolas patent. With both companies holding identical patents, the USPTO will now play King Solomon and decide which parent gets custody of the baby.' Both the Microsoft & Eolas patents are available online."

6 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. I'm glad a read the article by geekoid · · Score: 4, Informative

    all that are doing is giving MS a chance to prove that they invented the technology before it was patented. This is not unusual.

    It is also why there are forms of invention protection you can use when shopping around for investors.

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    1. Re:I'm glad a read the article by mavenguy · · Score: 2, Informative

      Except you missed a few things...

      Inventors: Doyle; Michael D. (Wheaton, IL)
      Assignee: Eolas Technologies, Inc. (Wheaton, IL)
      Appl. No.: 09/481,984
      Filed: January 11, 2000

      CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

      This application is a continuation of and claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/115,502, filed Jan. 11, 1999, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.

      Inventors: Beezer; John L (Redmond, WA), Silver; David M (Redmond, WA), Zeman; Pavel (Kirkland, WA)
      Assignee: Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA)
      Appl. No.: 10/870,472
      Filed: June 18, 2004

      This application is a continuation of and claims priority from application Ser. No. 09/465,081, filed Dec. 16, 1999, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,826,725, issued Nov. 30, 2004, the content of which is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety.

      Thus, Eolas is entitled to a filing date of Jan. 11, 1999 and Microsoft is entitled to a filing date of Dec. 16, 1999. Thus Microsoft filed about 11 months later, but before any Eolas patent issued. Microsoft would be the Junior Party in an interference, and would have the burden of proof of prior invention.

  2. Keep tabs on patent reform here by Mateo_LeFou · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://judiciary.house.gov/committeestructure.aspx ?committee=3

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  3. How do you spell 'broken'? by fredrated · · Score: 2, Informative

    USPTO

  4. Re:Any chance in hell they'll both get revoked... by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 3, Informative

    And software "plugins" have been obvious for decades. No matter what context they're used in.

    There is a lot more to it than just the concepts of a software plug-in. There is even more to it than the very general description that gets bandied around here at Slashdot.

    It's pretty standard here to take the title or first paragraph or so of the patent description and jump to the assumption that this is all they have. But this is almost always wrong.

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  5. Prior art from 1997: The applet tag! by NWprobe · · Score: 3, Informative
    Plugins was introduced by html 3.2 on the 14th of january 1997. That's prior art to any of the patents by more than 3 years. It cannot be patented.

    HTML 3.2 adds widely deployed features such as tables, applets and text flow around images, while providing full backwards compatibility with the existing standard HTML 2.0.


    http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32/
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