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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.
No, they are the bad guy. The laws suck, and the guys using the laws to hold the software world hostage to moronic demands are bad guys.
What I'm finally waiting for is the other shoe to drop and guys like Microsoft to finally admit that software patents are just plain bad. The industry is becoming increasingly hostile to new development.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Eolas is not the bad guy here, they're just doing what is legally possible. You can't condemn a company for following the law, just because it seems wrong.
Morality is not defined by law.
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.
Slave owners were not the bad guys, they were just doing what was legally possible...
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--frank[at]unternet.org
That is a load of crap.
If there is a loophole in a law that allows my hypothetical company to dump toxic waste into the municipal water supply -- but it saves my company money -- then I would ABSOLUTELY be to blame for taking a legal action that was clearly harmful to my community. Whether or not the law is broken, I have a moral imperative to act ethically. Certainly there are grey areas, where what you do might not be particularly nice, but isn't actively harmful (for example, your average political ad) but when you begin abusing the law for profit, you've stepped out of the grey and into the black.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?