Microsoft to pay .5 bn for license to extend web-browser

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

This is pretty bad news, because it means that ActiveX and all systems
for extending browsers by scripts are at the mercy of the owner of
a broad and trivial logic patent, main claim is listed in

        http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/effects/eolas/

GregNews discloses some interesting facts about this patent:

>     -  JURY RULES (UNTIL OVERTURNED :-) MICROSOFT INFRINGES EOLAS PATENT

> Newswires report Monday night that a federal jury has found Microsoft
> guilty of infringing the Eolas patent involving embedding interactive
> programs in Web pages.  Details below.  But what does it mean?  Nothing.
> Nothing means anything in the world of patent scope and patent litigation
> until the CAFC rules.  So any reporter calling me up about this - this is
> my answer to all of your questions - the decision means nothing, except
> that Microsoft will maybe have to post a bond. 

> Anyway, the jury in Chicago found Microsoft guilty, and ordered them to
> pay at least $520 million to Eolas.  Eolas was launched in 1994 to market
> technology that allows users to access interactive programs embedded in
> Web pages. Eolas chairman Michael Doyle along with two others developed
> the technology while at the University of California at San Francisco.
> Eolas owns the exclusive rights to market the technology, while the
> university owns the patent.

> The award of $520.6 million was based on the jury's calculation that $1.47
> per unit represented reasonable royalties for the more than 354 million
> copies of Windows sold from the time the patent was granted in November
> 1998 until September 2001.

> I do take a bit of personal pride in this decision, though, because the
> first patent application I ever did a patentability search for was this
> Eolas patent (filed by the University of California).  See what good
> things happen when you use my patentability search services?  Services
> any company can afford (this last comment a prelude to a future PATNEWS
> where I criticize the heck out of a patent lawyer from Intel who whined
> at a Congressional hearing that Intel can't afford to do patentability
> searches - give me a freeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaking break).

Greg says here that the Eolas patent with its horrible claims is unlikely
to be defeated with prior art, because he himself checked its validity
before it was submitted to the PTO.

Here is the main claim again for your perusal:

  A method for running an application program in a computer network
  environment, comprising:

     providing at least one client workstation and one network server
      coupled to said network environment, wherein said network
      environment is a distributed hypermedia environment;
  
     executing, at said client workstation, a browser application, that
      parses a first distributed hypermedia document to identify text
      formats included in said distributed hypermedia document and for
      responding to predetermined text formats to initiate processing
      specified by said text formats;

      utilizing said browser to display, on said client workstation,
       at least a portion of a first hypermedia document received over
       said network from said server, wherein the portion of said
       first hypermedia document is displayed within a first
       browser-controlled window on said client workstation, wherein
       said first distributed hypermedia document includes an embed
       text format, located at a first location in said first
       distributed hypermedia document, that specifies the location of
       at least a portion of an object external to the first
       distributed hypermedia document, wherein said object has type
       information associated with it utilized by said browser to
       identify and locate an executable application external to the
       first distributed hypermedia document, and wherein said embed
       text format is parsed by said browser to automatically invoke
       said executable application to execute on said client
       workstation in order to display said object and enable
       interactive processing of said object within a display area
       created at said first location within the portion of said first
       distributed hypermedia document being displayed in said first
       browser-controlled window.

Since this patent is so basic and, as Greg says, so difficult to
invalidate with prior art, I wonder why Univ. of California didn't
file it at the EPO.  Were they deterred by Art 52 or by the EPO's
"technical contribution" junktalk?  I can't see in what way this claim
could have had any difficulties passing at the EPO.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
160,000 votes 2000 firms against software patents    http://noepatents.org/