Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Eolas Sues World + Dog For AJAX Patent

Posted by kdawson on from the to-fix-patent-system-replace-judges-in-tyler-texas dept.

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.'"

11 of 647 comments (clear)

  1. laughable by drDugan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:laughable by hondo77 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Taking the fruits of your neighbors labor to supply for yourself would be called stealing if it was done directly and without the government as a middle man.

      Huh? My bosses do that every day.

      --
      I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
    2. Re:laughable by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

      WTF?
      Are you 12?
      All civil society will have some amount of decisions and freedom removed from the individual. We give up that freedom to have a civilization. More or less of that is not evil, it is just a choice.

      Also socialism and communism are not interchangeable.

    3. Re:laughable by ClosedSource · · Score: 5, Insightful

      There is no "contract of employment". They pay you what they want to pay you and get rid of you at will.

      The only contracts involved are the ones that say you can't work for a competitor or use the knowledge you gained on the job to get a better one.

    4. Re:laughable by agrif · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Taking someone else's car in exchange for little pieces of green paper would be called stealing if it wasn't backed by the government.

      I agree with the grandparent, here: socialism and communism are not inherently evil ideas, any more than capitalism and federalism.

    5. Re:laughable by noidentity · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, if the world were fair, each person would be held to the same standard, and the standard wouldn't make any references to specific people or groups (i.e. "friends of mine get special treatment"). Fair doesn't mean you get treated well, just that it be by the same standard as everyone else.

    6. Re:laughable by Shakrai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Taking someone else's car in exchange for little pieces of green paper would be called stealing if it wasn't backed by the government.

      No, because nobody put a rhetorical gun to the sellers head and told him to sell the car or go to jail.

      --
      I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
      We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
    7. Re:laughable by localman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm so tired of hearing this. Please, please, please: man up and point out to me a stable first-world country that is doing things as you think they should be done. Where has a lack of central regulation yielded anything other than subsistence farming and warlords? Where has a modern national infrastructure been built without government intervention? Where has the vast majority of the populous been made literate without public schools? Where has crime and poverty been kept to minimal levels without any government social programs?

      As far as I know, it hasn't happened. Your ideals are based on a pipe dream just as foolish as communism: that left to their own devices the free market will get people to willingly build the cathedral of society we all take for granted today. If you have an example of this, please point it out and I'll modify my views. If you can't find an example, will you modify yours?

    8. Re:laughable by Cerium · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Dear Slashdot:
      How do you mod an entire thread off-topic? :(

  2. Re:More power to 'em by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Given that the defendants are also ridiculously litigious about software patents,

    Every case like this that is lost by the defendants serves to further legitimize this type of patent. If they win this, any project using Ajax is at risk, including many popular FOSS forum and CMS packages. So you'll pardon me if I'm less than enthusiastic about this, regardless of who is defending.

  3. Re:Open Source by gujo-odori · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Partially correct. That is one point where prior art is useful. This situation is another. If someone sues you for patent violations and you can find clear prior art, then you can attempt a flanking maneuver: file suit to have the patent invalidated. If you can invalidate the patent through prior art, you don't even have to fight the frontal battle of proving that you aren't violating the patent.