[Patents] [Fwd: BT claims patent on the hyperlink?]

[seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson)]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: BT claims patent on the hyperlink?
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 18:21:53 -0500
From: RV Head <4whp@HOME.COM>
Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications             
<CYBERIA-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: CYBERIA-L@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

http://www.idg.net/crd_idgsearch_732742.html

BT, Prodigy U.S. hyperlink patent trial date set


Laura Rohde, IDG News Service\London Bureau
November 20, 2001, 11:06


LONDON - A court date was set Monday in the lawsuit brought by British
Telecommunications PLC (BT) against U.S.-based Prodigy Communications
Corp.
for patent infringement through the ISP's (Internet service provider)
unauthorized use of the hyperlink.

Last year, BT said it had discovered that it holds U.S. patent 4,873,662
for
the invention of hyperlink technology used on the Internet, and on Dec.
13,
2000, the London-based telecommunication company filed suit in federal
court
in White Plains, New York.

In the latest pretrial hearing for the case, a court date was set for
Feb.
11 through Feb. 12, 2002, with Judge Mark Fox presiding, a federal court
deputy said Tuesday.

BT and Prodigy could not immediately be reached for comment, though BT
in
the past has declined to discuss the details of the case except to say
that
it is seeking "appropriate reparations" from Prodigy.

Early in 2000, after discovering in a routine check that it owned the
patent
for the hyperlink, BT wrote to 17 U.S. ISPs, including Prodigy, asking
them
to pay for the privilege of using the technology through licensing
agreements. The suit filed against Prodigy, which claims to be the
largest
consumer DSL (digital subscriber line) ISP in the U.S. as well as the
first
commercial ISP in the U.S., is the first suit BT has filed to protect
its
hyperlink patent.

BT owns what it calls the Hidden Page patent, which was filed in the
U.S. in
1976, granted in 1989 and isn't due to expire until 2006, giving the
company
the intellectual property rights to hyperlink technology. Hyperlinks
connect
text, images, and other data on the Internet in such a way as to allow a
user to click on a highlighted object on a Web page in order to bring up
an
associated item contained elsewhere on the Web.

Last year, BT also hired U.K.-based technology development and licensing
com
pany Scipher PLC to broker licensing agreements with the U.S. ISPs. BT
said
that it would not pursue patent claims with individual users, as it
would
"not be practical."

Tim Berners-Lee, is generally credited as leading an effort, with Robert
Cailliau, to write the underlying protocols -- including HTTP, or
hypertext
transfer protocol -- for what later came to be known as the World Wide
Web,
at the CERN nuclear research center in Switzerland in the late 1980s.
Berners-Lee's work was based on, among other things, earlier work
carried
out by Ted Nelson, who is generally acknowledged to have coined the term
hypertext in his 1965 book, "Literary Machines."

BT, in London, can be reached at http://www.bt.com/. Prodigy, in Austin,
Texas, can be contacted at http://www.prodigy.com/. Scipher, in
Middlesex,
England, can be contact at http://www.scipher.co.uk/. The World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) can be contacted at http://www.w3.org/. The Hidden Page
patent can be accessed here


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