Man Claiming He Invented the Internet Sues

wiedzmin writes "A low-profile Chicago biologist, Michael Doyle, and his company Eola Technologies, who has once won a $521m patent lawsuit against Microsoft, claim that it was actually he and two co-inventors who invented, and patented, the "interactive web" before anyone else, back in 1993. Doyle argues that a program he created to allow doctors to view embryos over the early Internet, was the first program that allowed users to interact with images inside of a web browser window. He is therefore seeking royalties for the use of just about every modern interactive Internet technology, like watching videos or suggesting instant search results. Dozens of lawyers, representing the world's biggest internet companies, including Yahoo, Amazon, Google and YouTube are acting as defendants in the case, which has even seen Tim Berners-Lee testify on Tuesday."

Comments

Really?

[Synn]

It's come to this now? How bad does it have to get before the entire system is scrapped?

Re:Really?

[rsilvergun]

The big guys would just love this. They pay this guy $500 million and then never have to worry about another Google coming out of nowhere and redefining everything again. In Europe it was called the guild system, and it kept knowledge and power in the hands of the ruling elite.

Re:Really?

[tripleevenfall]

Unfortunately for him, entering text with a keyboard was my idea (and I have a few friends who remember me saying it) so he owes me royalties for that patent petition!

Re:Really?

[hey!]

Well, looking at his patent claims, it's a lot more like he's patented the use of something like Applescript to let a browser control an external application. In fact in 1994 this was quite common in the Apple world, Applescript being introduced in 1991. In fact I think quite a few people were viewing medical imagery and multimedia (remember when that was a buzzword?) stored in "databases" like FileMaker and (ugh) 4th Dimension. It was commonplace stuff in the Apple environment while the Microsoft-centric world was still banging the Windows 3 rocks together (remember Windows for Workgroups?).

The web, however, was not commonplace in 1994, so he may well have been the first to file for the use of this technique with a browser. However the technique was so commonplace it would be hard to imagine that it was *original*, especially if he used a browser with the necessary IPC mechanisms built-in. Why else *would* they developers have made an Applescript-aware brower *but* to interact with other programs? If they wrote the browser themselves, then they might have a claim that an IPC-aware browser was a novel thing.

In any case, unless I'm mistaken the patent doesn't describe built-in multi-media capabilities, or multi-media capabilities through plug-ins. It covers controlling an external program with a browser.

I wish this guy success though. As you suggest, this will gore enough oxen that somebody with money will care that the system is broken.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, no...Lee invented the web, not the 'internet'. The internet has been around much, much longer than the 'web'.
I agree...hand in your geek card.

Re:Really?

[ackthpt]

Meanwhile, Berners-Lee, one of the guys who actually invented the internet, and probably couldn't care any less about all the legal nonsense, has to get dragged into court to testify. What a waste of time for the poor guy.

It is upon this condition these sorts of Patent Troll suits prosper - when you don't show up the judge or jury is more than likely to rule against you.

IANAPL, but looking at that patent, I can name several technologies which existed before it, peforming parts of the same functions. Problem is, the companies which made those products are mostly out of business by now and what hardware isn't in the Computer Museum is in a landfill in China, where a lot of the old computers went to be scraped for gold and copper.

Re:Really?

[hey!]

I lived through this. Apple got rejected from the enterprise market because (a) they had no interest in competing with cheap commodity hardware and (b) they acted as though they were doing their IT department advocates more than enough favors by letting them buy Apple stuff in the first place. They had an unnerving habit of pulling the rug out from under you too. God help you if you invested Apple's A/UX Unix (which was technically superb).

Apple's "corporate DNA" has always destined it for the consumer market.

As for their networking support, it was superb for the time. The only drawback was the implementation of LocalTalk over RS 422; it was a bus topology like thinnet but slower and without positive locking connectors. You can't compare Apple's built-in networking to Windows 3, because Windows 3 didn't have any. If you compare it to Novell, Novell had better file serving, directory services and scalability. Apple had better practically everything else, including UI (of course), P2P and service discovery.

As for VB, it was a primitive era in 1994 when the patent was filed. VB 3, the first version with the Jet engine, had only come out the year before and VB code monkeys were excited about the datagrid control. In any case you have no idea what I'm talking about. Applescript is an object oriented inter-application communication system. It makes no sense to compare it to VB (you want to look at HyperCard for that); it makes more sense to compare it to something like CORBA or SOAP, only it provided a standard scripting language in addition to a networkable common object model (AppleEvents). On the whole it was very similar to Javascript and DOM, only able to control things other than web browsers.

Don't get me wrong. I'm *not* a fan of Apple the company. I swore I'd never develop for another Apple platform again (although iOS is tempting) because of Apple indifference to developers and enterprise managers. But Apple sure has made some products that were ahead of their time.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

You have to be really braindead.

[dnaumov]

So you not only sued Microsoft, you actually won 500 million. Regardless of whether this was a dick move on your part or not, good for you, you are now set for life (or 3).
Now why on Earth would you risk it all by going into litigation again?

Let him succeed

[DoofusOfDeath]

His patent is about as valid as 99.999% of all computer-related patents from the last 25 years. Maybe if he sues the entire planet into oblivion, someone will admit how screwed up software patents are.

Ah, how I love my afternoon fantasies...

Re:there has to be some statute of limitations...

[stating_the_obvious]

RT(F)A -- Suit originally filed in 1999. Since the claim is specifically against image interaction, rather than simply hyperlinks, the timing is just about right.

Re:Patent Lifespan?

[Surt]

It doesn't matter to the courts if the patent expires during the course of the case. The damages, if legitimate, were done during the period the patent was active. He just won't accrue any additional damage once the patent expires.

Re:there has to be some statute of limitations...

[NewWorldDan]

If you'd read the article, you'd see that there has been some back-and-forth with the patent office. Most of his claims were invalidated and some were then later reinstated. He had semi-successfully sued Microsoft, had the judgement overturned, and then later reached a settlement (undisclosed, but estimated to be in the realm of $100 million). Worth noting is that Microsoft was not allowed to present evidence of prior art at trial. Why that would be, I have no idea - I'm not a patent lawyer. In any event, in terms of this guy not acting on his claims, that's just an indictment of how slow the legal and patent processes move.

Certainly, there's no question that by the time his patent application was publicly published, much less granted, everything in there was in common use. Frankly, if you strip out all of the buzzwords like hypermedia, it boils down to something as simple as downloading and running a script. That's it. And there's plenty of prior art that existed in 1994 for all of the claims listed in the application.

Re:LIAR

[Samantha Wright]

What I want to know is: "How did 'inventing a web browser plugin' get turned into 'invented a network that has been in place since 1969'?" Seriously, I want to stab samzenpus in the face for letting this through. What's next? Will Bill Gates be said to have invented the microchip?