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Texas Jury Strikes Down Man's Claim to Own the Interactive Web
ackthpt writes "Sir Tim Berners-Lee traveled to a courtroom in East Texas to give his testimony on how, if upheld, the Eolas Technologies & University of California patent on Web Interactivity could prove to be a major threat to the Internet as it's known today. The Jury deliberated only a few hours before invalidating the patent in question. In a victory Tweet Berners-Lee said, 'Texas jury agreed Eolas 906 patent invalid. Good thing too!' Google, Amazon, Apple, Adobe and a host of other companies, with representatives present, must have given a Texas-size sigh of relief."
Cue that kids from the Simpsons laughing... Point at Eolas laughing:
Ha Haa!
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Just like Billy goat gruff...the troll got thrown off the bridge by the Google goat.
AL should have patented it when he invented the dang thing! Then we wouldn't have these issues. I guess it was too "inconvenient " for him at the time..
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Satan, satan, please check your realm. Is it frozen over or what? Some East Texas jury found for the defendant in a patent law suite. Wondering what happened and how a random act of sanity struck East Texas. I know those guys were upset about their main Rick Perry being laughed off the national stage. Are they taking the first baby steps to acquire some kind of respectability?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I was originally going to submit the story yesterday with the comment "how could they consider this patentable? We had windows with full 3D manipulation going on prior to 1991. We ran Patran via X11 and to the layman that would appear as a "super" browser window. It covered all aspects of any interactive patent by having full 2-way communication, visualization, and interaction. The only thing it didn't do was run over HTTP."
But it looks like common sense ruled and the jury did the right thing for once, even in Tyler.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
A frivolous patent troll's suit is stricken down in a Texas court?
What is the world coming to??
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
would like to see this guy win the patent. That would tell the rest of the world how stupid the patent process is, and possibly bring SOME sanity back to the patent awarding process.
Also, I for one welcome would have welcomed our patent wielding overlord.
Sir, I've met Al Gore, and you're no Al Gore.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Since US patents have no validity outside US borders the rest of the world would have just collectively rolled its eyes yet again at daft US patents and moved on if he had have won.
Let's keep up the momentum and invalidate a host of other stupid patents.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
The crooked judge (Ward) who ran the Eastern District of Texas recently retired:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._John_Ward
Ward steered cases towards the plaintiff since his son was the major plaintiff's lawyer in town. The new judges are less crooked and do not have their children practicing before the court.
Juror 1: "If we say this patent is valid, they'll take our internet away!"
Jurors: "Hell no!"
Juror 1: "I guess we should shoot the breeze for a couple hours so they will think we thought hard about this."
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
Maybe not - all these companies are using the commercial weapon of frivolous overbroad patents. They should be worried that a court has finally had the guts to start drawing the line as to which kind of patents are acceptable or not.
I really don't appreciate all the Texas bashing.
But I'm glad about the ruling, because the internet is really _my_ invention.
The patent suit Eolas filed against Microsoft took around 8 years to litigate? The case even went to the Supreme Court, though it refused to hear the case. This is just a temporary setup back for Eolas, they'll appeal, unfortunately. I wouldn't say its over until they lose their appeals or the companies offer to settle. BTW, a big fuck you University of California who's also being a patent troll here. Hope all your Silicon Valley alumini boycott you.
That's very nice, but is it actually relevant to the case? I'd have thought the case would be decided on its own merits, rather that the consequences.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It seems odd that the testimony was 'could prove to be a major threat to the Internet as it's known today'. If we are going to have a patent system it seems unreasonable that the argument that the technology in the patent in question is too critical to the way society operates and is so central should be a reasonable argument for invalidating the patent claim.
I'm not intending to make any claim about this particular patent. I only wish to say that that seems like a stupid reason to invalidate a patent based on the patent framework that we seem to have.
Agreed. And can we stop referring to judges with the mandatory "honorable". US military officers still expect to be referred to as "sir" by their enlisted counterparts. It's about time that these terms be abolished. A simple "comrade" should be sufficient for all citizens.
MS plays loads of games with patents now. No doubt they were hoping that this would be used against a number of their enemies (pretty much everybody else). So, did Eola get this wrapeed up so that if the patent was lost, that they did not have to pay back MS? Otherwise, there is a LOAD of money that has to go back to MS.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
News: Crazy guy... does something crazy... news at 11!
However when I read into it a bit the same company of paid off by Microsoft for 500m (that's HALF A BILLION!) for a patent.
With incentive like that, can't blame a guy for tryin'!
The summary suggests the jury based their decision on the patent's validity determining the existence of our internet. This is a terrible idea, and most likely not what happened. The effect on a patent validity decision should not be a part of the process, and based on the article's description Tim had no business there giving any opinion. Only facts about what was in place at the time, as it pertains to prior art.
Also, the company only wanted money according to the article. It did not want to shut down the internet. So in this specific case, the same is true. It's irrelevant, and the 'what if' case should not be considered.
The question is simply, is the patent valid? And it obviously isn't. But that should be the story - why it's not valid. Not that it *might* kill the internet that we know and love today if it were valid.
Common sense is not a part of this - just the facts.
Tim Berners-Lee Twitter Reference: https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/167724524299759616
Jason Wohlford
Anyone else think if it was Apple or Google filing this patent the judge would have passed it without taking a second look?
well put. the logical fallacy of "X must be true, because if it isn't the result Y would be unpalatable" should have no place in determining patent validity. It should most definitely be part of defining patent law, because you'd hope they are creating laws to produce acceptable results. But given current law, if I patent something and in the process of trying to license it everybody and their mother starts using it, a court had better determine that I get paid by those who used it without license. 'Oh, it would inconvenience too many people' is no excuse to invalidate a patent unless you're proposing to work that into the actual patent law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences
But, then they would just pack up their bags and abandon that toehold. Only corporations with significant USA holdings would stay. If the patent extortion lasted long enough and was onerous enough, they too would leave.
Three patent trolls should band together to appeal on technical grounds. The outcome might be scary, is not a basis to invalidate a patent more specific than most that are actually upheld. This is about keeping the internet "free as in beer" even though no part of the internet is actually "free as in beer".
JJ
Anyone claiming to have patents on fundamental aspects of the internet, even if said patent were valid, would and should not be given any benefit. If their patent is indeed valid, it would have had to have been given well before the internet ever came into being, so most of those patents would have to be well over 10 years ago. That is way too long to be sitting on a patent and not enforcing until now, after everyone has well been using it.
The effect on a patent validity decision should not be a part of the process, and based on the article's description Tim had no business there giving any opinion.
.
Exactly so, in fact, Tim may have handed them grounds for appeal. http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2664719&cid=38997547
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
How grand of a victory was it if you tweet in celebration?
+1 Disagree
Since when is the validity of a patent claim at all related to the damage it could do to someone else's business model or infrastructure?
I'm not saying I agree with the troll, but that's no basis to invalidate a patent.
Madcow
The effect on a patent validity decision should not be a part of the process, and based on the article's description Tim had no business there giving any opinion. Only facts about what was in place at the time, as it pertains to prior art. Also, the company only wanted money according to the article. It did not want to shut down the internet. So in this specific case, the same is true. It's irrelevant, and the 'what if' case should not be considered.
I disagree. The Constitution makes it clear that copyrights and patents are NOT a fundamental right, and exist only for consequential reasons: "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." Allowing Eolas to shut down the Internet, or even tax it, would not promote the progress of science and useful arts. Therefore, the courts should not allow the patent system to be used in this manner. This is true regardless of any other facts in the case. The Constitution not only permits, but demands, that we consider the 'what if' case when it comes to copyright and patent laws.
did you actually read the article you linked all the way through? No-one is saying 'it would break the internet for the patent to be valid, therefore it isn't'. They're saying 'it would break the internet for the plantiffs to win this case, so they shouldn't'. [in the past tense, obviously, since the case has now been concluded]
Further, the very last section of that article:
In law, an argument from inconvenience or argumentum ab inconvenienti, is a valid type of appeal to consequences. Such an argument would seek to show that a proposed action would have unreasonably inconvenient consequences
supports the view that a legal ruling which would have ridiculous consequences ought not to be made simply because the consequences would be ridiculous.
FGD 135
because we don't understand anything about technology. ya know, except for Texas Instruments.....
It's not like Tim was just passing through town and decided to stop at the courthouse on a whim. The defence invited him as an expert witness. The defence lawyers and the judge obviously decided they had valid grounds to do that.
The defence lawyers and the judge obviously decided they had valid grounds to do that.
So what?
Lots of defense lawyers and Judges make errors that open the door for appeal.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Short history lesson:
The ARPANET (1970-1990) and the start of the NSFNET (1985-1995) and the attachment of CERN to NSFNET (1989) and the writing of the first WorldWideWeb browser (1990) predated Gore's involvement (HPC&Com act of 1991). The stuff that Gore's bill funded essentially funded optical links (the information superhighway) to update/expand the NSFNET and provided funds for the NCSA @UI which made the Mosaic web browser (1992)
However, the commercial internet (the network) that we know of really came out of CIX which was an attempt by various US commercial network providers to avoid the acceptable use policy of the NSFnet backbone. Originally, the government allowed some such "non-acceptable" traffic through a third party company (called ANS), but they charged too much so CIX was formed by UUNET, PCINET, and CERFNET to bypass the NSFnet backbone all together. The concept of "peering" traffic was also rolled out at that time.
One might argue that the bill written by Gore providing the "taste" of an internet was done to spur corporations to develop the CIX backbone themselves, but having lived through those intitial times pre-CIX, I can say that it was more like how the existance of the Post Office spurred the creation of FedEx than any direct monetary benefit from the funding that the NSFnet backbone folks got... You might argue that the research that made FedEx (commercial internet) was possible was "funded" by the PostOffice (ANS/NSFnet), but that's a tenuous argument at best.
Texas hicks to the rest of the world: "Y'all're welcome."
Please site your sources.
In case you want some more though, the facts simply don't line up with your snark. The percentage of patent cases where the plaintiff succeeded at trial was, over the period from 1995-2009, in line with the national average (66.7% trial success in East Texas vs. 66% nationwide), and by all indications it hasn't changed from that in the last few years (as a point of comparison, Florida Middle District Court had an 80% trial success rate for plaintiffs over that same period).
According to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._John_Ward
Since Ward initially joined the Eastern District of Texas, the district has seen a tenfold increase in cases since 1999.[8] There were 14 patent cases in 1999,[8] 32 in 2002,[1] 155 in 2005,[8] and 234 in 2006.[1] The district is one of eight with more than 100 new patent filings each year.[8] Ward heard more than 160 patent cases in his first seven years on the bench.[3] He had been handling 90% of the patent cases in Marshall, but later was reduced to 60%.[6]
Patent cases presented before Ward were more frequently won by the patent holder plaintiff than the defense.[9] One source claims that patent holders win 88% of the time in Ward's court, compared to an average of 68% nationwide.[3] Another source claims that patent cases in Marshall are won by patent holders 78% of the time versus 59% nationwide.[1] And a third source claims that in 90% of cases patent holders win jury verdicts.[8]
And maybe patent trolls will stop trying to find convoluted justifications for filing their suits in East Texas. A nice win in a "troll friendly" district.
We are the 198 proof..
All your Internets are belong to us.
http://www.busyweather.com/
East Texas ruled AGAINST a patent troll!
There's hope for the US yet!
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool. (*)
The day Texans start calling eachother "Comrade" is the day I'm going outside to watch the pigs fly :)
(*) extra o's added for benefit of Google's comedy detection suite.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Everything about the site will set your bile afire.