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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."

4 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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  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. 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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  4. 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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