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'Eolas' Browser Plug-in Patent Case Rises Again
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."
Worked for King Solomon! Just split Microsoft in half, Applications apart from OS and we're all set!
Do you Gentoo!?
See why I don't like software patents, because they're stupid and everyone gets hurt.
Unless of course, you manage to patent something that a large company will have to pay you $500+ million for. But if that's my large company, I'll be upset.
At this rate, we might as well patent integration and differentiation.
No, because they don't fall under what the USPTO considers obvious.
Thinking you could of come up with the same thing does not make it obvious.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In the world of One-Click innovation, nothing is obvious. In the world of software patents, everything deserves a government-granted monopoly.
There are only two requirements for a software patent: the money to pay your lawyers and the conceit to bury your conscience.
And software "plugins" have been obvious for decades. No matter what context they're used in.
But software is more like a creative work than a physical object, so you might want to compare it to books. You get a copyright on a book, so that people can't print off copies of your book and make money off it. Imagine if you could get a patent on a book, such that nobody else could write a book with a similar plot. We'd have a lot less books, or a lot more litigation going on in the book making industry. You couldn't even start to sit down and write a book without reading through thousands of patents on books that people had written. It would be fairly impossible for two authors to come up with exactly the same book, but you could probably find lots of books with similar plots, and similar pieces of text. Just like with software. Presented with the same problem, most programmers will probably come up with very similar methods of solving the problem. I guess it's more of a problem with patents in general than with software patents. With so many patents out there, how are you supposed to know if you are infringing on something, and if you take the time to do the research, to see if you are infringing, then it will take you years before you can even start developing something.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Any chance in hell they'll both get revoked... for being "obvious?"
let's hope. But if only one will be revoked, I hope it's Eolas. Microsoft may be terribly competitive, and using their advantages to hurt competition, but they're not poor (like Eolas) and aren't stupid (like Eolas).
They won't sue anyone over this patent.
If anything, this confirms again Microsoft, and any other big company, is more or less forced to patent bullshit so they have a chance to fight back in such frivolous suits.
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.
That also doesn't mean that software patents are *right*.
More so than a lot of other professions, programmers entire job is to sit and think of ways of doing things. I think the standard for "non-obvious" should be much, much stricter for such a cerebral and abstract pursuit.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Just because the people who Eolas bought the patent from were the first to pose the problem, that still doesn't make the solution any less obvious. This is a major flaw with the patent process that the SCOTUS has recently partially addressed: the fallacious assumption that if you're the first to solve a problem, then your solution must be nonobvious because nobody has solved it before. That's not true. Being the first to work on a problem has nothing to do with the obviousness of any solutions you come up with. And the Eolas patent is dead obvious, regardless of how many obfuscating phrases they pack into their claim.
Would anyone grant such a step ahead of the current normal state of the art now under modern "obviousness" rules? I hope not; the system was seriously screwed at the time. On the other hand, would you, if you were a small inventor that offered a tech to Microsoft but had it turned down only to then have the 800-lb gorilla then use it in a flagship product, want MS to get away with it? (If you answer "yes" to that one, I have to ask whether you like throwing chairs and chanting "developers"...) I know it's fashionable among a certain clique to hate Eolas, but according to the facts (yes, the truth really is out there if you choose to look) they're within their rights to get their payout. (FWIW, the usual reason for not pursuing a payout - that the other party has a defensive patent portfolio to apply in retaliation - don't apply this time because Eolas changed the field they were working in. It happens.)
Of course, if you're only riled up over this because of the effect it has on your web apps in IE, you should switch to Firefox which isn't adversely affected.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
I won't disagree with what you say about the quality of the patent - but the run-on and poorly worded bit is standard. I had a Lawyer explain it to me at one time - the upshot being that you need single sentences in the claims. The wording is also VERY precise (but not normal English!) Sorry - I do not remember the exact reason for the run-on bit but it made sense at the time.
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the whole plugin thing was definitely novel at the time when Eolas was busy inventing
Nonsense. The idea of adding software to other software at runtime, as needed, to increase functionality is basic. Very basic, and was being done very early on.
Naive people who think that giving a software blob a new name somehow mystically gives it new functionality are a large part of the patent mess and you're contributing to that mess by calling this name change an "invention".
Until the PTO can actually cope intelligently with language they will continue to be a sad joke. They're forever confusing language and reality, particularly in software. Patent proponents frequently don't even realize all they're talking about is a name change.
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Windows and closed source software. The US intelligence agencies' back door to every network connected country and business on earth.