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Webvention Demanding $80k For Rollover Images
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Webvention is demanding that websites with rollover images pay $80,000 or face a patent lawsuit based on US patent 5,251,294, which it bought from Intellectual Ventures. Webvention claims to already have licensing deals with Apple, Google, Nokia, Sears, Sony and Orbitz. Right now, they're suing Abercrombie and Fitch, Bed Bath & Beyond, Dell, Gamestop, E*Trade, Neiman Marcus, Visa and ten others in a court in east Texas."
Help me out...
An interactive information environment for accessing, controlling, and using information. Using a computer, available sources of information are accessed, and components are extracted, labeled, and formed into discrete units called contexts. A user selects and rearranges context labels and their associated contents. Contexts are selected and combined into new information structures called alternates, which are combinable with contexts into preferred situations. The preferred situations in turn are combinable with the foregoing components into meta-situations. All components have labels; labels and their associated contents are interchangeably movable and copyable at the levels of these information structures, whether they are located locally or remotely, and the information structures are combinable. While a label is invoked and manipulated, its contents or description is simultaneously displayed. Each information structure can be rearranged into one or more models which can be displayed by user selection, and models can be displayed at varying levels of detail. With built-in copyright accounting, commercial control remains with information owners, while operational use is centralized in each user.
WTF does this mean, and WTF does it have to do with rollovers?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
An interactive information environment for accessing, controlling, and using information.
Patent legalese for "Using a computer"
Using a computer, available sources of information are accessed, and components are extracted, labeled, and formed into discrete units called contexts.
I prefer to call them directories. But some folks like "folders".
A user selects and rearranges context labels and their associated contents. Contexts are selected and combined into new information structures called alternates, which are combinable (sic) with contexts into preferred situations.
Hmm.... View->Details. Custom Folder views....
The preferred situations in turn are combinable with the foregoing components into meta-situations. All components have labels; labels and their associated contents are interchangeably movable and copyable at the levels of these information structures, whether they are located locally or remotely, and the information structures are combinable (sic). While a label is invoked and manipulated, its contents or description is simultaneously displayed. Each information structure can be rearranged into one or more models which can be displayed by user selection, and models can be displayed at varying levels of detail. With built-in copyright accounting, commercial control remains with information owners, while operational use is centralized in each user.
Am I the only one that reads this as a file system? This has basically just described viewing & renaming multiple folders with properties and permissions. Just because one adds "meta" or "abstract" on a level of a system doesn't mean they've invented something new. As a matter of fact, it means the exact opposite. It means the designer doesn't know what the user will need, so they're trying to keep the options open. As a developer I understand this can mean a lot of work in coding, but it's nothing new. Customization != Invention, and I hope the patent office can take on this 1 rule: If your patent says "meta" or "abstract", you lose, you fail, no patent for you.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
Hands up any programmer with ordinary skill in the art who thinks they can build whatever "invention" that patent is describing.
also
Filed: February 7, 1990 (more than 20 years ago)
Issued: October 5, 1993 (more than 17 years ago)
If I set up a website tomorrow with rollovers and they included me in their speculative invoicing scam how could they apply this patent?
Isn't it true that the judge these cases often comes to has a son that works for a law firm that often represents the patent trolls
It predates onmouse events in Javascript, but it's doesn't predate onMouseOver events in Hypercard. I'm willing to bet that there's already prior art from that sphere that was overlooked.