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Eolas Sues World + Dog For AJAX Patent
helfrich9000 writes "Eolas has filed suit against 23 companies (guess where), including Adobe, Amazon.com, Apple, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, JPMorgan, and Playboy. At issue are a pair of patents (US 7,599,985 and US 5,838,906), one of which (the '906) was successfully used in litigation against Microsoft Corp for a $565 million judgement. Says Dr. Michael D. Doyle, chairman of Eolas, 'We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources. Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what's fair.'"
Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what's fair.
There is ridiculous dishonesty in this assertion.
Of course profiting off someone else's work is unfair. Nothing about what the litigant or the defendants have done or will do relates in any way with "fair". If the world were "fair" every single human would have as an inalienable right free access to decent food, housing, healthcare, and security and working beyond that would be an optional choice to better their life. Humanity is far, far from this ideal, and everything we do now in the business world is *nothing* about fair, it is about power and capital, and having long chains of other humans working for the profit of those few who have learned how to escape or work the system. Remember more than half of your planet's population still farms their food by hand, and dies in large numbers when there are droughts.
"Profiting from someone else's innovation" is at the very basic essence of working capitalism. It an the assumption driving nearly all investment. Using capital to buy a stock, and having that stock rise in value, has the effect of making a profit off the wealth creation and innovation in that company. I don't take a position for or against that system it is highly efficient, when it works, at allocating resources and creating significant development.
But even beyond the nature of business and profit, these folks have gone down into the depths of corporate IP litigation, where the idealistic light of "fair" shines like smelly dirt. Lawsuits rarely have much to do with a high notion of justice; they are what you can pay for, and what you can win. To assert that ones actions are about "fair" when filing a corporate IP litigation lawsuit is patently absurd and frankly laughable.
Given that the defendants are also ridiculously litigious about software patents, I say more power to Eolas. I think the whole idea of software patents is absurd anyway but if there is going to be pain suffered by anyone then it needs to be suffered by all. Adobe, Amazon.com, Apple, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, JPMorgan, and Playboy are all probably really saddened by the fact that they didn't come up with this themselves quicker.
'We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources.
Bullshit
Show me the web site that you made providing an interactive web app back in 1994, only one year after the web was even invented.
Don't have one? No one did? Thought as much...
From my perspective, one of the key advantages to open source software is it will make busting these kinds of patents a whole lot easier. There's almost certainly prior art somewhere for nearly every software patent on the books, but it's all in unsearchable proprietary code that may or may not have been deleted years ago. As more code gets added to sourceforge and other repositories it's going to get a lot easier to say "Hey, this thing you patented was done twenty years ago in an obscure open source project nobody uses anymore. And I can prove it."
You should sue east texas as a co-conspirator in your patentented patent trolling violation. After all, without their help, trolling wouldn't be as profitable.
Greed is an inherent part of human nature
So is intelligence.
Using intelligence to moderate greed is not the same a communism.
Lassez-faire is not an ultimate truth. If it were, then we would have private police, unregulated tobacco, and the supermarket could sell you anything that looked like meat without any regulations at all. That is a recipe for a crime and public health disaster.
The question is not the removal of all regulations, but understanding when regulations are needed. History is *full* of examples of the evils of unregulated markets. Even Alan Greenspan as backed off from that ideology -- and he was the "wizard", and chief high-priest of that position -- and an extraordinarily intelligent man.
Human beings are more than just selfish greedy individuals. We are capable or more than that -- and that is NOT communism OR socialism.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
... for the last 15 years and didn't notice that, well, every damn company on the web was violating their patent. You should only be able to claim damages from the time you file a suit. Sorry you waited until now to get off your asses and do something about it.
As always, I don't represent you and this post is not legal advice, and does not represent the views or opinions of my firm, or its partners, yadda yadda.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
This should be a Wake up call to the US patent office and others like it. Patents need to be reviewed by experts in the respective fields to which they belong. (it is obvious that they are not due to these patents). Its another patent that should have NEVER been approved!!! How much money does the US goverment make from this process , any clue, because at the point when 20+ companies are being sued over patents which should have never been issued then in my view the only people actually profiting heavily are the winners of the lawsuits and the lawyers. I am sick of this, I have rather interesting views of what socialism is about (I was born in the UK and lived a dual-culture life (between the US and UK) for many years and at this grand age of my late thrifty I am becoming of the possibly immature view that governments seem to spending more time screwing things up with their wonderful ideas (good examples, the national health system mess in the UK (partially due to Microsoft contractors), The inability for mothers trying to collect child support in the UK (another microsoft contractor cock-up), the absolutely silly and arcane laws which get passed limiting our online freedoms, and finally the stupid patents). Is this where our hard-earned tax dollars are going????? Are people working hard so that Mr. Dumbarse MP or Senator retard can pass dumb laws. Are people working hard on legimate technologies only to be used for things that they never should have to be worried about in the first place. And finally how much is it costing the taxpayer, Its enough to make you want to demand that you get to allocate where your taxes get spent instead of writing your respective government a blank check. Enough is Enough, USPTO, Get a ******* clue! I've had enough myself, its frustrating to read about. In a time of global economic crisis it seems the goverments involved are doing a poor job at not only protecting the everyday citizen but also the larger businesses as well. I am not advocating Anarchy, but something huge needs to change here. How and why I am sure is going to hopefully spawn many comments and insults!
My first computer had 1024 bytes of ram
They're trying to patent client/server communications, except over the internet! It's a painfully obvious approach and their patent should (idealistically) not hold water, due to it being completely obvious. You might try submitting your app as evidence in one of the big suits to revoke their patent. We're all interested parties here, and really anything that can be done to eliminate this obvious patent troll would be fighting The Good Fight IMO.
Who knows, maybe the judges in these cases will see the light and throw Eolas out of court. One can dream.
I'd ask Eolas to show their technologies that they demonstrated widely over 15 years ago. If they're trying to sue the pants off of everyone for copying their demo, they should have it handy.
AJAX is just client server fancied up a little bit. There's no real difference architecturally between a 1985 FoxPro application and a 2008 AJAX application, except that the AJAX application will be slower but scale to a million users and have prettier fonts and worse reporting.
This is my sig.
Animated GIF? Web page executes in a browser causing the browser to perform additional I/O (the IMG SRC tag) to the server to retrieve an application (the GIF file) and executes it. (Animated GIF files contain a "program" of sorts that specify what images to decompress in what order and how long to display them.) How long has GIF been around?
>>> We developed these technologies over 15 years ago .... Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair... All we want is what's fair.'"
15 years is too long for a software patent to last. Eolas had more than enough opportunity in that time to capitalise and recover R&D costs on any software technology by making a real product. Eolas didn't ever do anything using this technology so is provably just patent trolling.
Whats fair is that the patent office should remove patent rights from owners not actively developing or marketing provably available products within a certain time period, otherwise they're just allowing troll companies to hold the whole tech world back from developing.
Communism implies the subordination of the individual to the state. In a true communist society there is no concept of private ownership. All assets, including human capital are owned by the state. If you don't see how much a system is inherently incompatible with freedom, liberty and individuality then we are probably too far apart to have a meaningful dialog on the issue.
All assets are owned by the state anyways. Yes, even in the USA. Your problem is that you don't realize it.
You don't own your house, even if it doesn't have a mortgage against it. Property tax. You rent it from the state. Stop paying your property tax and what do they do? Put a lien on your house. Kick you out. Sell it for the back taxes. Still think you own your home? You don't.
Eminent domain. They can take your house anyways even if you do pay your taxes. Or a business interest can do it if they persuade (read that as "pay") the local government and make a compelling argument they could bring in more tax revenue with your property than you can.
Mineral rights. You can lose your home if there is something interesting buried under it.
Bankruptcy court. If you don't pay your taxes they'll sell your car, your computer, even your shoes. It all comes out in the audit, and if the powers that be decide you owe them money they'll take anything you think you own and sell it in a Sheriff's sale.
Forfeiture laws. Even if you have a pocket full of bills they can claim you are probably up to something and declare the money itself guilty of a crime and take it. They don't like it when you sidestep banks and have money they can't track, count, and make you pay tax on. They can take your car, your boat, anything you own for any reason at all.
The only reason you own anything you currently have right now is because the government hasn't said otherwise at the moment. They can change their minds anytime they like and take anything they want. Legally. You don't own jack.
Subordination of the individual to the state? Hell. The great bulk of humanity has never been free and never will be. Not here, not there, not anywhere.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Just imagine, the roads being maintained by Microsoft. The FDA run by Apple. The city water utility by IBM.
If you know nothing about history, then I suppose those ideas might appeal. To those of use with a brain, it is a nightmare.
IBM would decide that a watertap is only worthwhile selling to big business, not to individual consumers.
Microsoft would make roads only drivable by Ford cars and then only the current model.
Apple would come up with legaleese to tell you that should your stomach explode, they are in a no way to blaim.
No, somethings are meant to operate slowly and ineffciently. If society was run efficient, we would raise all kids in centralized institutions and kill old people once they are no longer productive. I take my goverment lumbering, out of date and inefficient thank you very much. For the alternative, see 1939-1945 and current day China.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You're an optimist; I see the future as one in which the big boys patent absolutely everything and anything, so they can cross-licence with each other while crushing the little guy.
Yeah, I'm a pessimistic cynic; 10 years in the industry can do that to a person.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
An attorney friend recently explained that problems aren't patentable, only solutions are. That is, you can't patent the idea of a cure for cancer, and then claim the rewards when someone finally accomplishes that task. Clearly, that philosophy is outdated, as this patent has apparently thrived.
The inventor, Dr. Doyle, has a PhD and was employed at UCBerkeley, seems more legitimate than your average troll. Nevertheless, he didn't describe any technical implementation e.g. a scripting language, dynamic libraries, or even IO redirection of an external app. Obviously, he must have intentionally avoided patenting a specific invention in order to cast a wider net.
Ironically, none of the defendants actually sells a product that infringes. The objectionable products are all provided for free. AJAX and the rest are neither critical nor valuable. Damages? In Microsoft's case, I'd have to guess the $500M award was entirely putative. The only defendant that even indirectly benefits from the technology is Adobe.
All of the described functionality existed prior to 1994. The supposed "innovation" is describing the browser as a virtual platform. So '906 patents the browser. Mosaic was already available. The premise must be that, prior to this invention, the browser was limited to reading HTML documents.
There are so many defendants, I don't expect this case to be settled. In spite of the recent decisions, which only seem to have heightened Eolas's hubris, the legal merits of this case are much flimsier than most— even patents that seem painfully obvious. I expect this case to be a real watershed for software patent disputes.
Seriously? As others have already mentioned, the private sector has only one interest...maximizing profit. You only have to go as far as looking at your local cable company to see "private sector efficiency" in action.
If the DOT were run by a private company, all roads would be tolled....heavily. You would have to pay lots of extra fees like "exit ramp usage fees". If you wanted to go to another state, you'd have to purchase a "subscription" to use those roads. You'd only be allowed to drive certain kinds of cars on those roads....those from car companies that have made cross-licensing agreements with the road companies (and those cars would cost quite a bit more then too). Safety concerns would take a back seat to profits (i.e. unsafe conditions would only be fixed if the costs of lawsuits outweigh the costs of repairs). And you can totally forget about aesthetics....cheap and ugly is what all your roads would look like. etc....etc...
So sure, from a pure efficiency standpoint, the private sector can do things more effectively and efficiently than government. But in the end, consumers still end up paying more from services provided by the private sector. The only time this isn't true is when prices are strictly controlled by government (e.g. here in North Carolina, electric rate hikes must be approved by the state). But then that's considered governmental interference in the marketplace, right?