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Eolas Sues Again: This Time, Facebook, Disney and Wal-Mart
judgecorp writes "Eolas, which claims to have patented key aspects to web browsers, is suing again, this time targeting Facebook, Disney and Wal-Mart for infringing hypertext patents. Eolas settled with Microsoft and has sold licenses to other players — but two of the four patents in this case have previously been declared invalid."
Hey Mack, here's a round of appleause for being cryptic.
this reminds me of the time my granny janice smith helped me find steve a job. she really loved to help my uncle time learn how to cook.
iHear you, bro.
Wikipedia:
"Lobbying (USA): Lobbying in the United States describes paid activity in which special interests hire well-connected professional advocates, often lawyers, to argue for specific legislation in decision-making bodies such as the United States Congress."
"Bribery: Bribery is an act of implying money or gift giving that alters the behavior of the recipient."
Feeding a broken machine the very stuff that makes it broken doesn't make its problems go away.
The reason we don't raise $100,000s to repeal foolish laws is because that's somewhere in the neighborhood of three to five orders of magnitude too low two actually have an impact on the way IP law is written in the US.
There are ~470 members of congress, all of which need to fund multi-million dollar campaigns every 2 years, and we're looking at probably a 10 year time horizon to enact real, meaningful change. At the same time, there are multiple Billion dollar a year industries which reply on patents and copyrights to protect their business model and cash flow.
$100,000 is like pissing into a hurricane.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
They are suing over 4 patents, two of which have already been ruled invalid. Shouldn't they suffer a significant penalty for knowingly suing over an invalid patent?
I was curious about that, too, so I just looked up the filing documents on PACER. The patents were declared invalid in the Eolas v. Google et al. trial, and Eolas has appealed that decision to the Federal Circuit (which they're allowed to do). This suit was filed with a request to stay all deadlines, pending the outcome of the Appeal in the Google suit.
Basically, this reserves Eolas' filing date for the suit, which may be important for statute of limitations issues or other issues, but it's going to sit there with no requirement for Facebook or anyone else to even respond until the other suit is done. If the Federal Circuit reverses the jury decision and finds the patents valid, then this one can go ahead, and they haven't sued over an invalid patent. If the Federal Circuit affirms the jury decision, then they can amend the complaint to remove the two invalid patents. Either way, Facebook et al don't have to even reply for a year or two.