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Patent Infringement Suit Includes Linking URLs In an Email
An anonymous reader points out a report at Groklaw about another new lawsuit from patent firm Intellectual Ventures against Motorola Mobility (they have an earlier patent suit against Motorola underway already). The suit seeks damages from alleged infringement of seven patents, most of which involve wireless communications and Motorola's use of Android. One of the patents, US5790793, is "A method and system for sending and receiving Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) in electronic mail over the Internet." Intellectual Ventures' complaint (PDF) says Motorola product that implement MMS violate this patent. PJ at Groklaw thinks this is another patent attack on Android:
"And guess where IV got these patents? Not directly from the USPTO. I'll give you a big hint. Some of them, from what I'm seeing, are from working companies. Don't they call that privateering, when active companies outsource their patents to trolls to do their dirty work? Why yes. Yes, they do. Can you guess one company in this picture? Someone helping Microsoft in its anti-competitive attack on Android and Linux, you say? Yes, one of the companies that seems to have transferred two patents to IV for its holy quest is Nokia, Microsoft's 'partner in crime', as I like to think of them. I know. You are shocked, shocked to know that patents are being used anti-competitively in a court of law."
Does that mean we can sic the patent trolls on the spammers? Hold on, lemme get some popcorn!
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
The courts have already ruled that taking something existing and "doing it over the internet" isn't patentable. By extension, taking a URL that could be sent on a printed letter and "doing it over the internet" isn't patentable.
That said, the patent isn't actually about sending URLs in an e-mail, it's about automatically displaying destination content of a URL in the e-mail itself. For example, how gmail has an option to replace any YouTube URLs with the actual YouTube video in the e-mail. While that also doesn't sound patentable to me, I can't point out precedence like I can with the "doing it over the internet" patents.
I'm sure the NSA archived some.
Those involved in fighting the patent are looking to invalidate via prior art. One claim of special interest is the auto-fetch of data as stated in one of the claims. The amusing thing is that such a capability raises security concerns, so even older software would likely not do such thing, making it difficult to find prior art that performed such a function.
Due to the dates in question, you are also dealing with the following obstacles: software in environments (e.g unix) that today's people do not understand (e.g command-line/batch), software that is no longer in use, developers of old software that still exist and can be found, and/or a verifiable paper/digital trail to establish dates when specific functionality was available.
BTW, the patent claims is not specific to URLs, but anything that specifies the location of some resource. Hence, older, non-URL-based methods that were implemented can be used to establish prior art.
P.S. Posting as AC since I may have some involvement with the case.
Wow, these guys sure are famous here:
Intellectual Ventures Tied To 1,300 Shell Companies
Intellectual Ventures' Patent Protection Racket
Intellectual Ventures Settles Lawsuits With Asian Memory Companies
Does Recent Goodwill Undo Years of Patent Trolling For Intellectual Ventures?
Nathan Myhrvold Live Q&A
Nathan Myhrvold, Do-Gooder
When Patents Attack — the NPR Version
You can probably ask Nathan Mhyrvold (2876713) directly.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
It seems that slashdotters think that the title of a patent IS the patent. For any patent title "A method for doing X," it does not mean that any method for doing X is covered by the patent. The patent describes the specific method of doing X. Now, sometimes the specific method is still totally obvious, not novel, and/or has plenty of prior art. But just because the title says "Method and system to create, transmit, receive and process information, including an address to further information" does not mean or imply that it covers every method for doing so.
The problem is not so much that the non-experts here assume that the patent covers all methods for doing X; the problem is that the patent trolls and their attorneys will pretend that the patent does so, threaten small companies using any other method of doing X, and ultimately, perhaps, try to confuse a jury between the patented method and some other method by focusing on the result rather than the method.
So, although the patent does not actually cover all methods of doing X, it is actually reasonable to assume that is exactly what the trolls are claiming.