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."

Comments

Simpsons Kid...

[Oswald McWeany]

Cue that kids from the Simpsons laughing... Point at Eolas laughing:

Ha Haa!

What? East Texas Jury?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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?

Re:What? East Texas Jury?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I got it. They all believe Al Gore invented the internet. That is why. Now it makes sense.

Re:What? East Texas Jury?

[Necroman]

From what I've heard (I recommend listening to NPR's investigation into IV), the district has become one of the best places for patent litigation as the judges are extremely familiar with the topic.

East Texas started being used as it was one of the few federal districts not backed up with drug related cases. Since then, that courtroom has become one of the defacto places to handle patent lawsuits.

Re:What? East Texas Jury?

[Hoi Polloi]

Really, can we get rid of the legal gimmick of cherry picking where you want the trial held because you know certain areas in the country are biased?

Re:What? East Texas Jury?

[forkfail]

Indeed. Ironic how someone who actually did get the national focus on the 'net and did a substantial amount to help fund the original hubs that grew into the 'net gets so much mockery from so many folks who's careers depend upon it.

Re:What? East Texas Jury?

[PickyH3D]

If they are so familiar with the topic, then why do they side with crazy so frequently?

This appears to have been a case of luck--not experience--that ended Eolas' current tirade through the industry. It's only a matter of time before they appeal the decision, and before the next stupid patent result coming out of East Texas.

Just to be completely fair, a lot of their decisions may simply fall on the side of stupidity because much of the system is broken, but there have been numerous patent cases running through East Texas that have had proven-prior art that was ignored for whatever reason.

Re:What? East Texas Jury?

[Grishnakh]

I was actually kinda hoping Eolas would win, and start demanding insanely high license fees, effectively shutting down the internet, at least in the USA. Then maybe the rest of the world would finally turn their backs on us until we fix our broken IP laws.

Re:What? East Texas Jury?

[flanders123]

If they are so familiar with the topic, then why do they side with crazy so frequently?

One theory I've heard is this "industry" is a huge boon for the town. All the local businesses (false fronts and not) setting up shop, all the lawyers flying in and out of town...this puts big $$ into the local economy. The region knows they own this niche market, and want the customers to return.

Its no different than locals supporting regional activities that could be questionable to the big picture....such as for argument's sake, big oil, coal mining, big corn, improper fishing, etc.

Re:What? East Texas Jury?

[interval1066]

The reason East Texas is popular for patent litigation is because its the one place in the country where any lawyer from any state bar can practice, and it alone has a set of rules that govern how patent cases are to be run that favour the plaintiffs.

Re:What? East Texas Jury?

[mcgrew]

You guys and your "my state is badder!" pissing contests... sheesh. Reminds me of an old joke (and no, I'm not from Alaska).

A Texan, a Californian, and an Alaskan are in camp, and the Texan brags about Texans. "We ride BULLS!"

The Californian laughed. "We ride WHALES!"

The Alaskan didn't say anything, he just stood there stirring the fire with his dick.

Re:What? East Texas Jury?

[dcollins]

Such a dilemma. Shall I believe you or Vint Cerf?

"Vint Cerf, undisputedly one of the Internet's key inventors, will give Gore the [Webby] award at a June 6 [2005] ceremony in New York. 'He is indeed due some thanks and consideration for his early contributions,' Cerf said."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7746308/#.TzVnvlZqDgc

Common Sense Rules

[Gr8Apes]

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.

What?

[blind biker]

A frivolous patent troll's suit is stricken down in a Texas court?

What is the world coming to??

Re:What?

[Anubis IV]

I know that /. loves to paint Texans, especially those in East Texas, as backwards folks with backwards ways, but the trope has gotten old, and I'd even suggest that it's harmful. We're using East Texas as a scapegoat to vent our frustration, but that only serves to draw attention away from the real threats that should be the targets of our ire. It's time /. moved on from blaming East Texas for patent cases gone awry.

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). Admittedly, East Texas did have a blip for about a year in the mid-2000s where the plaintiffs won more frequently, and that's when it deservedly earned its reputation, but its rates have since then returned to levels that are in line with other district courts.

Despite that, there is still a mistaken perception that the East Texas courts are plaintiff friendly, but that's all it is now: a perception. In fact, for NPEs (i.e. non-practicing entities, a.k.a. patent trolls), the Florida Middle District and the Delaware District courts had overall success rates (i.e. including summary judgments) that were about 11% and 7% higher, respectively, than East Texas over the period from 1995-2009.

That said, the East Texas courts do make for an ideal venue for trying patent cases, even if they're not as one-sided as people here seem to think. The district has faster turnaround times than many other federal districts, the judges are well-versed in patent cases and have indicated an interest in handling them expeditiously, and there are local laws permitting lawyers from any bar association, not just the Texas bar, from trying their cases there, making it easier to use than some of the other districts. The fact that the judges are knowledgeable is especially important, because many of the corporations being sued prefer to have their cases tried there, rather than getting them transferred to their home district where an ignorant judge can add a major level of uncertainty to the equation (in fact, in one case involving 112 defendents a few months ago, the East Texas judge was able to dismiss 99 of the defendents immediately because they weren't infringing and didn't request transfers to other districts). As a result, more cases that start in the district tend to stay in the district than you might otherwise see, creating a larger volume of cases that reach a conclusion.

Any court will make rulings we disagree with, but the rulings we disagree with make big headlines every time, get brought up frequently, and linger for quite awhile in our collective minds, while the ones we agree with tend to disappear and not be brought up over and over again. Since East Texas has so many patent cases, they naturally have more cases that we hear about, but we latch onto the ones that we disagree with and use them to confirm our past belief - now mistaken - that East Texas is a plaintiff's playground.

They have a term for that: confirmation bias.

Re:AL should have patented it when he invented it

[gl4ss]

maybe he thought that just showing it to world was enough to make it unpatentable.

like it should.

Judge's finding:

[FatLittleMonkey]

Sir, I've met Al Gore, and you're no Al Gore.

A major threat to the internet - In The USA

[Viol8]

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.

Re:A major threat to the internet - In The USA

[ackthpt]

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.

But any multinational with a toehold within US would have been subject to the outcome, no matter how odious. It is by these means US law may be employed to guide business and government beyond US borders.

Keep Going

[lazarus]

Let's keep up the momentum and invalidate a host of other stupid patents.

The crooked judge retired

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The crooked judge retired

[flanders123]

Now Ward has resurfaced as a partner in his son's law firm. http://www.judicialhellholes.org/2012/01/25/retired-texas-judge-to-argue-patent-cases-in-his-old-court/

Jury Deliberation went something like this:

[IMarvinTPA]

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."

Relevance

[Hognoxious]

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.

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.

the interesting part of Berners-Lee's comment

[Stewie241]

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.

small rewrite of history

[slew]

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.