Patent Office Decides Maybe Eolas Did Invent The Obvious
from the uh-oh dept
Last year, when the patent office rejected the claims in Eolas' browser plugin patent, Eolas quickly turned around and said that this was standard procedure and the eventual ruling would come out in their favor. It looks like they might be correct. The patent office indicated today that they're going to uphold the Eolas patent, which could mean that Microsoft could be in a bit of trouble (nothing a lot of cash won't solve, but still...). This is a perfect example of ridiculous patents in action -- and everyone will suffer for it, either by forcing browsers to be less useful or by making other products more expensive. Again, this isn't a situation where someone came up with an idea that was "stolen," but that those who were doing the actual innovating came up with the obvious next step, only to find someone sitting around claiming they owned a patent on that obvious concept.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
A ray of hope...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: A ray of hope...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: A ray of hope...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Eolas
:)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Eolas patent not found obvious
The Eolas v. Microsoft litigation remains, with the Wei browser as prior art.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Eolas patent not found obvious
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Eolas patent not found obvious
Second, publications concerning the Wei browser were not presented in the W3C re-exam request. Such documents were in a nether-world because they were presented at trial, but were [wrongly] not considered prior art [in a bad decision by the district court].
Third, even if these documents [and possibly public use] did NOT establish invalidity, the failure to disclose to the PTO might establish unenforceability through inequitable conduct, an entirely different issue. Why the Berkeley prof failed to mention the Wei browser to the PTO is hard to fathom. Why the Berkeley prof tried to obtain a statement from Wei about the Wei browser seems an incredibly stupid thing to have done.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Trial transcrips show that they did steal it
The trial transcripts indicate that Eolas showed their browser to both Andreessen and Gosling in 1993, and to Microsoft in 1994, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. And, the implementation that wound up in the various browsers is a direct rip-off from the IEEE paper that the Eolas guys published in 1994. Of course they stole it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]