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.'"

Comments

Re:More power to 'em

[supernova_hq]

Try living in Canada. Canada ruled a long time ago that software patents are not allowed. However due to the patent treaty we signed with the US and half of Europe, now they are.

If you are confused, this means that Canadians are not allowed to be awarded software patents (good), but still need to abide by software patents awarded to Americans and Europeans or be SUED (very bad).

If you are STILL confused, welcome to the club :(

I made a webapp with a tcl/tk browser add-on in 93

[presidenteloco]

A couple of months after Mosaic browser was publicised.

Does that count?

It used a tcl/tk app to draw vector topographic maps. The tcl/tk app
commanded the mosaic browser to fetch data for the map, and to
display accompanying text info in its browser window, changing the
text depending on clicks in different locations on the map.

It seemed f'ing obvious at the time.

Re:Bullshit

[dissy]

You realize almost every new concept exists as technology showcases before they make there appearance in the general public right?

Ok, I can understand why you didn't read the article, and why you didn't read the summary, but how did you manage to read the end of my post and not see the beginning?

I'll requote for you adding the important bits:

'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.

Please insert $0.25 to play again!

Re:laughable

[biryokumaru]

How about the first guy sells his food for money to the second guy, then uses that placeholder of equal value to purchase whatever it is he needs from guy three.

In essence, from guy one according to his ability, to guy two according to his need, then from guy three according to their ability and back to guy one according to his need.

My god! Capitalism is Communism!

Re:laughable

[silentcoder]

It is fundamentally contradictory to be both an evolutionist AND a libertarian.
Darwin's most cited source, the research on which he built his own research was the theory of Maltus. . Maltus showed that the human population grows exponentially, while resources like food grow linearly. Darwin expanded this to all species, and stated this as the source of scarcity, which creates competition - without which, evolution cannot happen.

But Maltus implies that poverty is almost NEVER the result of "laziness", "providence" or the influence of a deity. Poverty happens because human population grows faster than our food supply (and other resources). This can change now - we have technology that didn't exist in Maltus' time, birth control. However it's an easily checkable fact that family planning only happens above a certain education threshold even now.
So free education is a form of enlightened self-interest. More educated people means less people struggling for resources that will never be enough.

In the meantime though - the simple fact is, poor people are poor because the maths don't work, and the vast majority of them can never be anything else. We HAVE to take care of each other, and accept that the poverty around us deserves pity, as most of the people suffering it, truly have no other option.
That is the core result of Maltus' theory - and if you reject Maltus, you cannot hold Darwin as the one is an extension of the other.

The claim that "any government powerful enough to give you what you want, is powerful enough to take everything away" begs the question (in the proper sense of the phrase). It assumes that the state, and legislature and power-holding government must always be the same entity. Why ? Those branches of government that provide services should be maximally enlarged. Those that wield power, kept as small as possible.

And you worry about having to pay some taxes ? In Brazil, tax rate is a flat 20%. And you get 100% of it back at the end of the year. The government takes the money, invests it, and spends next years budget out of the earnings - you get all your taxes back, the only loss is a bit of earnings and inflation. Since there is no way you alone could have earned on your taxes, what can be earned by the combined taxes of everyone - this is the most efficient allocation of the resource.
With that, the government can afford, among other things, to provide free medical care to all. And I've been in their hospitals, the state medical in Brazil is of HIGHER quality than the private medical care in South Africa. Preventative care like oxygen tank time for people with a viral infection is standard practice, not something that only happens if you're rich enough to pay for it (and your insurance company doesn't weasel out of their obligations).

All this, for effectively, ZERO tax. Sure, it's 20% monthly, but it's zero yearly.
Maltus doesn't mean it's impossible to relieve poverty, it means we cannot blame it on the poor - if poverty is caused by lack of resources, then the answer is to allocate resources more efficiently, which opens up the door to a loophole in Maltus' theory. It assumes the terminal stupidity of our species. Getting more people educated, can reduce stupidity (specifically in family planning) and change the maths.

This is a lot broader than AJAX...

[davide marney]

Patent US5838906

Abstract:

"A system allowing a user of a browser program on a computer connected to an open distributed hypermedia system to access and execute an embedded program object. The program object is embedded into a hypermedia document much like data objects. The user may select the program object from the screen. Once selected the program object executes on the user's (client) computer or may execute on a remote server or additional remote computers in a distributed processing arrangement. After launching the program object, the user is able to interact with the object as the invention provides for ongoing interprocess communication between the application object (program) and the browser program. One application of the embedded program object allows a user to view large and complex multi-dimensional objects from within the browser's window. The user can manipulate a control panel to change the viewpoint used to view the image. 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."

In other words, the patent is on the entire concept of embedding objects in a browser. I think this illustrates perfectly some of the faults of software patents: 1) It is a concept for an invention, not an actual invention; 2) It is a re-statement of general practices and patterns (remote procedure call; client/server; interactive user interface) that only looks new because it is being re-applied to another technology (browsers, in this case); 3) It is over-broad in scope, covering not a particular invention but an entire class of inventions; 4) It is general in execution, not requiring any specific device or implementation.