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Eolas To Sue Apple, Google, and 21 Others
vinodis and several other readers sent along the news that Eolas is suing 23 companies including Apple and Google for patent infringement. The company won $585M from Microsoft in a drawn-out, 9-year battle that the companies settled in 2007; in the course of it the USPTO upheld the "906" patent several times. Now, Eolas is also in possession of a newly-issued patent that they claim covers the use of any browser plugin with AJAX. Let's see how far this lawsuit gets before the Supreme Court plays its wildcard in the Bilski case, which we have been discussing for a while now.
What the hell does this mean?
a newly issued patent that they claim covers the use of any browser plugin with AJAX
What do plugins and AJAX have to do with each other? Are they saying you can't build a browser that supports AJAX? I don't understand what the patent is for.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
1- Other will be sued if they succeed.
2- MS, Abble and others will get more and more defensive patents..
So here we go...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
I think we've hit the breaking point for software patents. The i4i suit was the first real big patent case I can remember (disclaimer, I have a short memory), especially due to the number of people affected - not just users, but retailers like Dell (according to them). This one ought to make everyone say "enough is enough".
[/fingers_crossed]
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
This is the type of scum of the earth shit that ruins productivity, innovation, and increases costs for every other consumer. Everyone wants to throw CEO's in jail yet these douche bags don't do ANYTHING productive for society. At least CEO's try and make their companies profitable(by providing services to consumers), even if it is just to cash in stock options.
Talk about the ultimate drain on society being upheld by the government... we need to vote against the judges and politicians that allow this to happen under their watch. GET OUT AND VOTE AGAINST THIS!! It will lower the cost of doing business and consequently the cost of goods and services. It will make these lawyers get out of the legal system for frivolous shit and back to doing something productive for society.
If you are able to sue 23 corporations that are also competitors for infringing on your patent, doesn't that pretty much mean it's an obvious, non-unique patent & should be thrown out?
There is a war going on for your mind.
I wonder how much it would cost to simply buy 51% of Eolas? If the shares are publicly traded, with 23 companies being sued it might even be possible for them to buy a small share parcel each without too much notice.
So if Youtube rewrites their site in XML, instead of HTML, they won't be infringing?
Citrix for presentation server & published apps? VMware for their PCOIP? Wyse? X.org?
It seems like in 7,599,985, they've successfully patented thin-client, VDI, and any remote application control/access/interactive media viewing from an embedded web app....
The invention allows a program to execute on a remote server or other computers to calculate the viewing transformations and send frame data to the client computer thus providing the user of the client computer with interactive features and allowing the user to have access to greater computing power than may be available at the user's client computer.
Now anybody can see what you did and how. Patents are as much a learning tool as they are an economic engine.
That's the sentence where you stuck your foot in it. How many hundreds of thousands of programmers on the planet? OK, now how many programmers search the patent database for ideas they can buy before coding? 100,000? 1,000? Can you name me even 10? Where is the Eclipse plug-in for searching the patent database for relevant algorithms? Where is the panoply of web startups offering an online search tool that locates the patented algorithms that will help you get your next project done faster if you license them?
When it comes to software, patents have had half their faces blown off. They no longer function at all as a learning tool, or even as an economic engine for a hard-working programmer/inventor to profit from their non-obvious invention/algorithm. With much of their original, intended functionality rendered useless, patents (most especially in the realm of software) have long since passed the point where they offer society more costs than benefits. They are almost entirely the tool of large companies, lawyers, and those who sell services to inventors gullible enough to believe we still live in an age where patents work the way you describe.
That's all that comes to my mind when I hear the words patent and U.S. in the same sentence. And that doesn't only apply to the IT.
The whole patent system should be put where it belongs: into the dustbin