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Will browser verdict snare others? | |
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| Time: 09:58 EST/14:58 GMT | News Source: ZDNet | Posted By: Byron Hinson | ||
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A patent-infringement judgment against Microsoft and its Internet Explorer browser has raised speculation over which company in the Web browser market might be the next target of Microsoft's pursuer. Eolas Technologies, a University of California spin-off with one employee, no products, a handful of patents and 100 investors, on Monday prevailed in its $521 million patent-infringement suit against Microsoft. | ||
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| #1 By 61 (24.92.223.112) at 8/14/2003 10:20:02 AM |
| Once again the patent office displays it's stupidity. |
| #2 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 8/14/2003 10:50:52 AM |
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Definately. If the Eolas verdict is upheld, you can bet that Mozilla, Opera, Safari, KDE and such will be next.
But fortunately Apple only has to pay $10 for licensing the 6 people actually using Safari. |
| #3 By 20 (67.9.179.51) at 8/14/2003 12:36:01 PM |
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#2: Some patents are good, some are frivolous. I'm sure MS has a few frivolous ones, but they have a LOT of good ones.
The problem is, this is patent abuse. Some guy patents some amorphous, abstract concept that can be applied to just about anything and then starts suing people because of it. It's a cheap trick and this guy is a scheister. |
| #4 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 8/14/2003 2:02:49 PM |
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gg - I tend to disagree, but then I'm not anti-business.
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| #5 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 8/14/2003 2:31:54 PM |
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jvmahon, they showed plenty of prior art. Tim O'Reilly (historically anti-Microsoft but quite objective) was their lead witness, and he provided examples of plug-ins developed by the O'Reilly group that predate the UC research.
In the same respect that the patent office is making subjective decisions about the specificity and originality of a patent app... so are the judges who are making decisions on the validity of these claims. |
| #6 By 20 (67.9.179.51) at 8/14/2003 3:00:28 PM |
| Admittedly, I have not read the entire patent, but from everything I've read in various articles, it sounds like it's one guy that has a "foundation" or "corporation" and patented some vague and innocuous patent that says something to the effect of "displaying multimedia content in a browser" which is so BS and completely vague as to not be worth anything and the patent office should've denied it for not being specific enough. |
| #7 By 61 (24.92.223.112) at 8/14/2003 3:22:38 PM |
| In my opinion, one should have to be able to build a working model of a patent in order to obtain it. That means it requires either personal funding or corporate funding and people actually building it. Otherwise you just have this patent sitting there, doing nothing to support the greater good of the industry, until some company unknowingly infringes on it. The guy is in it for the money and money alone, not with the intent of actually building something with his idea. |
| #8 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 8/14/2003 4:39:11 PM |
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Phaedrus, that's called copyright. People, please try to understand the system before proposing you've got a better one.
CPU, Eolas developed the patent through research work at UC and did have working models (not that they have a product today but...) I wouldn't attempt to propose that having a research budget or some other financial backing is predicated for a valid patent. That sounds like a retarded idea. What about small, independent inventors/developers who create new products/ideas but then need to secure financing or to license their idea to companies that can produce it? Everyone arguing against vague patents... or patents which exist before a product exists... I'll remember you for the day MS tries to "protect" its DRM-OS "patent." A huge percentage of patents will always come before a product, in many cases by many years. Why? Because many products are too expensive or legally precarious to develop before securing the rights to the product. (Not that that's the case here, but I want to point that out to everyone saying there must be a product.... That's retarded.... It completely reverses the order of business.) This post was edited by sodajerk on Thursday, August 14, 2003 at 16:42. |
| #9 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 8/14/2003 6:07:08 PM |
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And I get that... But what you are saying doesn't help the situation or solve a problem ... if anything it creates more.
Usually a prototype is built and from what I've read there were prototypes... What if the patent is for a hundred million dollar chip manufacturing process or something similar? What if I am an individual inventor and can handle some manufacture but I understand that volume production and distribution channels will make the product thrive so I spend five years negotiating with VCs and other companies over funding, channels, and/or licensing rather than provoking the competition of larger competitors with my limited resources? What if I have ten or twenty products that are taking all of my companies ability and capacity for the next five years but I develop a new idea that I want to develop at some time down the road? How do you determine what is the "intention" to some day build a product vs. sitting on it for legal action? What is the problem with one person? Linus Torvalds has all of the rights to the Linux kernel and that is far more complex than an applet. (UC did have students last time I checked by the way.) If you can suggest a real solution to the problem or if you want to cry about somethign that is actually related to the problem, great. But otherwise, talking about it being a small company, not having any products based on the patents, etc... is just doing a disservice because you are completely missing the issue. I would wager that a large percentage of all patents exist without a corresponding product, but that doesn't prompt people to say that those patents are not valid. This post was edited by sodajerk on Thursday, August 14, 2003 at 18:09. |
| #10 By 3339 (66.219.95.6) at 8/14/2003 6:17:56 PM |
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Let's put it another way:
the only problem is: that the patent is for something that is a logical extension of an existing product that could have and would have been developed any number of ways by any number of people independent of any knowledge of this patent... (related but kind of a different reason:) ...that these other ways of producing the same result would not hinder Eolas from producing products based on their unique technology. That's why this is a bad case. And that is the only reason. On the other hand, I can easily imagine supporting the protection of someone's patent rights that resulted from development at school with other students and researchers... who then founded his or her own company and secured the patents... and who still hasn't produced a product for some years. Why? Because it could be a valid patent, and the creator of that patented technology deserves the rights to it. In fact, this person may be the ideal for why patents exist in the first place... being that he is an individual, with limited means, etc... but with a unique intellectual idea that may have economic benefit to him/her. So what good is it to bitch about things which are perfectly valid and defensible? Why not argue about something that's relevent so you don't sound like an idiot because you're proposing, essentially, to hinder innovation by halting all patents issued without a corresponding product. This post was edited by sodajerk on Thursday, August 14, 2003 at 19:35. |
| #11 By 16302 (64.201.211.161) at 8/14/2003 9:09:28 PM |
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I think there should be a cap on a patent that is related to some reasonable multiple of the expenditures designated as R&D for the technology. For example, if someone comes up with a software idea in 10 hours, and spends about $10,000 in total to get it through development/testing and the patent application, and if the multiple is 10, then the maximum benefit they can get is $100,000. When this is reached, the patent is then retired and the author can continue to have copyright protection.
This approach would stop all of these abuses in their tracks, open up the opportunity for other companies to improve products without stepping all over frivilous patents, while at the same time giving a reward and protection to inventors. In the same light, if a company spends $100,000,000 developing a new drug, then they could still maintain their patent until they get $1B in royalties (or 25 years) whichever comes first. |
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