Company Claims Patent On Pop-Up Ads, Sues Porn & Travel Companies
from the well,-if-it-gets-rid-of-pop-ups... dept
I have to admit that I'm still a bit surprised that pop-up/pop-under advertisements still exist. The concept is so annoying and so anti-consumer that pretty much all browsers figured out ways to build in pop-up blockers many, many years ago. Every so often one gets through (almost always advertising Netflix, by the way), and I get annoyed and try to remember never to visit that site again. However, Paul Keating alerts us to the news that a company called "ExitExchange" now claims to hold a patent on pop-up ads, and has sued seven porn sites and two travel companies for using them without a license. The patent in question is US Patent 7,353,229 for a "post-session internet advertising system." It was only granted in 2008, but its priority date goes back to May of 2000. I tried to look up a history of pop-up ads, but was unable to find any definitive source on when the first pop-up ad was used. Still, just because it wasn't done back then doesn't mean the patent is valid -- perhaps people were just smart enough not to do something that annoyed the hell out of everyone. The company has sued Travelocity and Kayak along with a variety of porn sites.Of course, this is hardly the only company claiming a patent on pop-ups. Years ago, there were multiple stories of others claiming patents on pop-ups and suing over those patents -- and it appears that most of those patents were filed long before the patent above. And, if you were hoping that maybe something good would come out of patents on pop-up ads, that they might be forced to go away, this history of patents and lawsuits over pop-ups suggests that it hasn't helped very much in stopping them.
![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
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 trolls, patents, pop up ads, porn companies
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
You can read the original patent at http://www.google.com/patents/US7353229 . To my untrained eye it looks like this is a patent for the idea of using mechanisms already in JavaScript and Java applets to present advertising. Reading the article as a programmer I didn't see much in the way of how to do popups other than "Use the tools that are already provided."
JavaScript and the ability to do pupups and popunders was released by Netscape in 1997. I am sure that by the time the '229 patent was filed there were a lot of tutorials that explained how to do pupup and popnder ads and did it better than this paptent.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Job well done, Luke S. Wassum, Primary Examiner!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
One one hand, it is patent trolling.
On the other hand, anything that gets us less pop-up ads is fine by me :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Point of curiosity...
I've noticed that too. What sorcery do they use to get that through?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Point of curiosity...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Point of curiosity...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Point of curiosity...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Point of curiosity...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There should be a cookie that indicates you already have a Netflix account so you'd get a different ad. Netflix is wasting a lot of money advertising to its own customers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I doubt netflix will bother with stopping a pop-up
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Thats a pretty good idea. i think i will patent it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
I called dibs. You might not have heard it, but I said it before you typed that. (That's how the patent system works right?)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
How can anybody patent a pop up?
The idea goes back to popups on OS, how is that patentable?
Every single GUI that I saw ever has popups for one thing or another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0
Yes I am that old.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Of course there were
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Simpsons Did It!
I remember one annoying night (and I'm pretty sure it was '95) that a site I visited generated a popunder. Then that popunder spawned another...in short order I had 3000+ windows and my Win95 promptly died with a BSOD.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I've learned long ago not to trust ads on the internet. They are a security problem and I will do everything in my power to prevent them from occurring on my machine. I know of several instances where others got malware through infected iFrames I didn't because I don't allow them to run.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
In case you need some prior art...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS"
Gee, what a surprise.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: See
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: See
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Talk about the innovation of scams, US of A is always on top...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I got suckered into clicking on a deceptive porn site link and they wouldn't stop poping up.
(it really was deceptive)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"most Internet businesses use interrupting advertisements such as pop-up windows"
So can you patent something that already has a name?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If you read the patent, it is for "Pop-Under" advertising.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I think everybody understands that. It doesn't change the fact that there is lots of prior art on this.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
window.open existed before 2000
[ link to this | view in chronology ]