Now Eolas Wants To Ban Microsoft From Distributing IE
from the shutting-down-the-internet dept
The folks at Eolas really seem to be getting cocky these days. They did win a half a billion dollar judgment, after all, saying that Microsoft infringed on their patent (though, now more evidence of prior art is showing up). Microsoft is appealing the ruling and making changes to the browser in case the ruling stands. However, that's not good enough for Eolas, who has now filed for an injunction that would permanently bar Microsoft from distributing IE. They'll still be able to distribute IE without the ability to do plugins (the annoying workaround they talked about earlier this week). Once again, it's nice to see how this "innovation" is helping to break the way most people use the internet.
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Patents vs. Domain Names
Why are patents different? Why can I patent something that is pretty obvious to a lot of people in the field, has a ton of existing prior art and NOT DO ANYTHING WITH IT but wait until someone else is making money from "my idea" and then sue them for half a billion dollars and then go back to court and try to dictate what products they can or can't distribute?
The only thing I can think of with Eolas's latest decision is that someone finally realized that IE is integrated into all of MS's operating systems (and office packages) and that if they can't distribute IE then they can't distribute Windows, Office, the MSDN, etc. and they have Microsoft over a barrel and can demand even more money from them.
Although I don't object to someone sticking it to Microsoft, I really hate to see people making money off of someone elses work like that.
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Re: Patents vs. Domain Names
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Re: Patents vs. Domain Names
By "work the patent" I assume you mean "file it away in a drawer and forget about it until you see something in the newspaper that reminds you that you might actually own that idea and then drag it out and sue someone", right?
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No Subject Given
In any case Microsoft is changing IE so that the injunction wouldn't affect them anyway because IE would not infringe the alleged patent.
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Eola has it's good points
Forcing people to save something before executing it will go a long way toward eliminating "accidental" infection.
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Domain name registration.
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Re: Domain name registration.
The Catholic church could make a legitimate claim to madonna.com if they could show they intended to use it for a legitimate purpose. But if John Doe buys madonna.com to run a porn site that's a different story. The reason the whole cybersquatter issue became a big deal was because people were selling domains that were registered trademarks like pepsi.com for hundreds of thousands of dollars simply because they applied for them first. Should legitimate businesses be forced to pay extortion to someone who registered a domain name just to force them to pony up big bucks? What's the first thing you do if you're searching for a company's website? You type in www.companyname.com. Doesn't it piss you off when you end up on a site that has nothing to do with the company you're looking for because they didn't register the domain in a timely fashion but instead you just get a page saying "this domain is for sale?"
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Re: Domain name registration.
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