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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.
Slave owners were not the bad guys, they were just doing what was legally possible...
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--frank[at]unternet.org