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Invalidation of Eolas's Web Patent Claims Upheld
New submitter Ajay Anand writes with news that Eolas's web patents are really dead (the infamous browser plugin patent that forced Internet Explorer to change how it activated plugins). After Eolas sued a number of companies, last fall a jury found the patents invalid; Eolas naturally mounted an appeal. But a panel of judges simply affirmed the jury decision (PDF). A quiet ending to a decade of patent trolling.
So... how much money was spent to make the right decision?
At least $565 million, which was the amount owed by Microsoft and the University of California.
Numerous others signed licensing agreements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eolas
Do they have to now give back the money they extorted?
If not, they won.
If only that were true...
#DeleteChrome
In other words will it create precedence for future legal settlements?
Personally i don't think so. Because, just like with everything else that is about economics, the legal system follows the money, through lobbyism or directly by political interference.
A lot of people are jumping in here claiming patent troll, but I remember enough about where the state of the Internet was in 1993 to feel that he was sincere in these patents. They did release a browser. they did offer licensing.
At the time he started development, there were under 100 total websites on the entire planet. A lot of people were pushing applications development to direct connect to services. For example, If you played internet chess, you opened XBoard, then pointed at a chess server. A lot of others were pushing other application specific services. There were competing paradigms in how things were going to develop. The whole idea of a web browser handling everything was not even close to being universally accepted.
So, he gets a patent. Launches a browser, but after Netscape launched their browser. No real traction with VC's as they were dumping their money into providing the services. The browser tanks, so he offers the tech for licensing. Microsoft among others says no. Then, Microsoft submits a set of patent applications that cover the exact same stuff under different names, then incorporates that tech into IE.
I dunno. Sure. Looks like a troll. He is suing to get money from his invention. But, then again, where Microsoft is concerned, he had a very solid case that they stole his ideas. He met with them, then they declined to license the technology, then they submitted patents covering the same material.
Now, given what we know now, embedded apps within HTML looks obvious, but there were other competing ideas and this one just won out. From our perspective in 2013, this was a clear winner, but when he patented it? Not so sure. And, under current laws of first-to-file, this patent would have held up.
I think the main problem I have with people claiming trolls is this: Whether a product is successful or not - in this case a browser, the IP behind it is still valid. If I invent a widget, but get swamped by companies with bigger bankrolls, that does not mean people can just take those ideas after my business goes under. IP is still property. The *only* reason this was overturned by prior art is because Microsoft decided it was cheaper to void their own patents rather than pay the lawsuit they lost.
Was there prior art? Yes... by a couple months. Did he know about it? There is enough doubt in that to overturn the patent. Was he strictly a troll? Nope. The date here is so early in development of the WWW that there were competing paradigms and multiple approaches being argued and discussed. He legitimately thought this was a valid patent.
He's set for life, with millions and millions of dollars for doing nothing else but sue for the past ten years.
I thought Microsoft lost over and over to them, and in the end paid them a fortune. Isn't Eolas the 'front end' to some dodgy university? Still, very good if another filthy patent troll is finally put down.
PS yeah, I know I could Google to refresh my memory, but then there wouldn't be much of a convo.
PPS I am getting the impression that putting down patent trolls is easy IF the defence against them in court STOPS using high-powered lawyers, and starts using very smart nerds who know how to find prior art, and dissect crappy patent applications. Juries are made up of (very) ordinary people. Big companies with their filthy legal sharks in their 5000 dollar suits do NOT speak to the people. Even worse when political correctness means the company defending against trolls uses female advocates, patronising the jury (and this comment is obviously in reference to IT cases, not court cases in general).
A simple relating of the truth to the jury by people who know what they are talking about, because they live and breath software, stands the greatest chance of making an impact. How many software patents have even a whiff of validity? Maybe less than one in ten thousand, and then NEVER the patents held by trolls.
A lot of people were pushing applications development to direct connect to services. For example, If you played internet chess, you opened XBoard, then pointed at a chess server.
And the Internet has since come full friggin' circle, with dedicated mobile applications to access particular services.
Unfortunately this might only be a melted tip of the iceberg.
Rot in peace you low-life slimy fat lazy pigs.
With funding cratering, the Bayh-Dole Act attempted to leverage whatever funding was left by allowing universities to patent the fruits of government funded research instead of formerly assigning intellectual property back to the federal government. And so the universities rushed to have their professors patent anything they could think of.
The Eolas patent litigation is a direct result of this sequence of events, the patents arising from University of California research.
Software-type patents are a problem unique in their virulence to the United States. There must therefore be an explanation in US history why this system has developed as it has. But unfortunately the real people responsible won't admit their fault.
I think 90% of what you said is right. The problem, I think, is the assertion that "lawyer & investor" is a nicer way of saying "patent troll". Sometimes that's a euphemism, sometimes it's not.
:). Rounded corners teach us that the problem isn't "software" patents. The problems are a) bad patents and mainly b) patent trolls. take care of those 16 patent trolls and you're reduce patent suits by 64%. Not all investor lawyers are trolls. 16 of them are and those 16 need to be dealt with.
"Dancer" sometimes means "stripper" often means "hooker". But not always. I have a friend who is a professional dancer. She is not a stripper. She even dances with a pole, yet she doesn't take off her clothes.
I learned the other day that more than half of all patent suits are filed by just 16 NPEs. vThere are millions of investors. Hundreds of thousands of people and companies have patents. All of them put together don't file as many patent suits as those 16 trolls. So those trolls behave entirely differently from the other thousands of patent holders. Those few trolls are the problem.
By the way they don't only troll patents that can be represented in software. They troll hardware patents, business process patents, and design patents. One of them even trolled a patent on rectangles!
It's not all a matter of dollars and cents. Patents effectively block others from using technology/methods which fall within the scope of the patent, regardless of whether or not it may be the most efficient/commonsensical way of doing things.
Here is a description of the Eolas patent :-
Eolas sued all the big companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Office Depot, Staples, Playboy, Sun, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase and Adobe.
To dodge the patent, Microsoft changed how IE worked.
It is good that the companies ultimately decided to fight the patent, and won. If the patent was allowed to fester, in the case of IE the alternative proposal was to require users to click on a dialog box for every ActiveX control that appeared on a page. Similar changes would probably have been required in respect of webpages maintained by the other companies. If you visit any of the websites run by any of the companies sued, it is likely that the way you access their functions would be different from what it is now (and probably require more clicking and/or be more annoying).
They did release a browser. they did offer licensing.
Right after another browser had been released, two years prior, incorporating the very same elements Eolas patented. What the inventor of this prior browser freely gave to the world (he declined to patent it), Eolas tried to keep for themselves by patenting it.
Lets talk about specific facts instead of hand-wavy personal feelings.There was prior art.
Since you are referring to the state of the internet at that time, lets hear from Tim Berners-Lee himself how it was like :-
If you read the decision of the US Federal Court of Appeal, it is clear that Eolas was aware of the invention of Viola because Pei Wei himself told them on 31 August 1994. Eolas went to Pei Wei's website and downloaded and read his paper. They went ahead anyway and filed their patent on 17 October 1994.
As for whether or not the Eolas patent was obvious, it was so obvious it was even mentioned in the 1991 letter to Berners-Lee.
So. If you rush to patent something obvious that was already shown by someone else, so that you can use the patent to sue large numbers of companies for money, what are you called?
What sucks is under American rules they don't have to pay their victims massive legal bills defending the suit. The victims get nothing to cover this or the incredible waste of time.