Microsoft, Eolas Settle: It's Still Cheaper To Pay Up Than Fight Bogus Patents
from the such-is-life dept
Microsoft and Eolas have been involved in a patent infringement lawsuit for many years. Eolas claims a patent on the concept of embedding other applications within browsers -- basically for the concept of plugins. This patent was questioned by many people who note that plugins are a pretty common concept and it hardly seems reasonable to give a monopoly over that idea to one company. In fact, none other than web inventor Tim Berners-Lee showed prior art for browser plugins, and the Patent Office suddenly started saying that it may have made a mistake in granting Eolas the patent. Unfortunately, due to the ridiculously complicated process to get the USPTO to review a patent, it was eventually ruled that the patent could be valid. However, it recently had agreed to review the patent again.Of course, as we've learned time and time again, since this process is so long, and the risk of losing gets costlier and costlier the longer you wait, it appears Microsoft has given up invalidating this highly questionable patent and has simply paid off Eolas in a settlement. The amount isn't defined, but Eolas is gleefully telling its shareholders to expect a dividend shortly. Once again, this highlights nearly everything wrong with the patent system and why it needs to be changed. A very broad and vague concept with plenty of prior art gets patented by a small firm that doesn't actually do anything. Then it holds up a large company that is actually offering a product to the market, and forces them to change their product, taking away functionality, while trying to collect hundreds of millions of dollars that could have gone towards further innovation. On top of that, it highlights how difficult, slow and convoluted the patent review process is that makes it so difficult to actually contest these questionable patents. In the end, it's often just cheaper to pay up, diverting money from actual innovation into the legal system. What a shame.
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
Filed Under: patent infringement, settlements
Companies: eolas, microsoft
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
How to stop litigation on bogus patents:
If you litigate against a company that claims your patent is not valid, you better be damned sure you are not just trolling because that $10,000,000 profit you got could be turned into a $20,000,000 debt.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: How to stop litigation on bogus patents:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
or else
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: or else
Certainly would be a cheap and easy way to get rid of that pesky mozilla-firefox.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
where
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mike, just give it up already !!!
Eolas patent is actually owned by the University of California
Evil evil patent trolls - US universities
Poor poor MicroShit
Mike said so
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Mike, just give it up already !!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Patent is owned by the University of California
"...The patent in question, owned by the University of California and licensed exclusively to its Eolas software spinoff,..."
So the patent is most likely owned by the University of California. I would be ashamed if I were representing the University.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Patent is owned by the University of Californi
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Mike, just give it up already !!!
Did I call them patent trolls? No. I just pointed out that there's plenty of prior art on a fairly common idea, and the patent never should have been granted.
You're the first one to suggest that they might be trolls.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Mike, just give it up already !!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If your ever sick, it works
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
prior art
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Joe Smoe
In NTP vs. RIM case judge specifically instructed the jury to disregard the court demo by RIM attorneys because the whole demo was falsified
Unfortunateluy patent cases are not like criminal cases - nobody goes to jail for contempt of court
Too bad
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Blind anger
That is not what happened and you should know it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Disappointing
Michael Doyle and a different group of UCB students saw the opportunity and created an overly broad patent which the USPTO granted when they should not have and gave the UCB a piece of the action to lend ligitimacy to their bogus claims.
None of the actual technology any of these people is significant. What did matter is they made their claims at a critical moment when the browser "platform" was beginning to be adopted by businesses, and they made those claims in a manner which convinced our government to grant them a overly broad monopoly (aka a patent).
Snookering the government in this way is nothing new.
Lehland Stanford and others in an earlier era became enormously wealthy by convincing the government to grant the land they needed well before they did any actual development. Michael Doyle and the Eolas gang were just trying to do same thing.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]