Can Lotus Notes R3 Prior Art Save The Browser? 522
theodp writes "Apparently stunned by the implications of Eolas vs Microsoft, Ray Ozzie of Lotus Notes and Groove fame offers up Notes R3 as prior art for the notorious Eolas patent. To bolster his argument, Ozzie used the Notes R3 feature set to recreate a scenario close to what was described in the patent. After the hard part of putting together a Notes R3 computing environment that included MS-DOS 6.22, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and a circa-1993 copy of Excel 5.0 obtained from eBay, it only took Ozzie about 15 minutes to knock out a demo without any programming using the out-of-the-box UI of Notes and Excel."
Nuts (Score:4, Interesting)
Hmmmm, this could be good for microsoft. (Score:2, Interesting)
You got the magnitudes wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
$500M, not $500k.
Specifically, 521 million dollars.
Something tells me Eolas broke out the champagne after that verdict...
Perhaps a "Prior Art" effort/community is needed.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Identify, research and debunk such absurd/greedy patents (and perhaps eventually much or all of the software patents nonsense) so as to get the patents withdrawn/cancelled.... and/or reassigned to some "open source" holder.
Might eventually be able to deconstruct much of the current software patent farce.
Or perhaps the "open source" community could get some showstopper patents of its own, to use as leverage against overreaching/absurdist patent holders holders to. Perhaps even get other altruistic patent holders to donate their patents to a pool of such patents held by an "open source" protector, so as to grow them and increase the leverage.
screw that activex crap (Score:1, Interesting)
Java applets, too, need not be in web pages and I'd live fine tomorrow if I had to download them and run them as normal applications. Any worthwhile ones are too big to run in a browser anyway.
I wish dillo had better rendering otherwise I'd abandon Mozilla, much less IE which I have no reason to use now that I can copy over Firebird on foreign Win machines and use without installation.
Great! Now... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Trial is over (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a guess.
All Hail Ray Ozzie (Score:2, Interesting)
As a Flash developer, the idea that users would have to take some convoluted route to access a movie I made just so some fat jerk can get rich really ticks me off.
The U.S. Patent Office needs to get up to speed and stop issuing patents on trivial systems features. I mean, using sub-programs in programs is something I have done in C++ since the late 80s. WTF Why is a Web browser supposed to be so special a thing that someone can issue a patent on a standard engineering process?
M
Re:Wrong (think PDF) (Score:5, Interesting)
Patenting plugins is like patenting the idea of DIY home improvement - ludicrous (although I wouldn't be surprised if someone has already patented the latter...)
Re:Commercial App part Re:not very good "prior art (Score:5, Interesting)
If you did use it for customers in the disputed time frame, then your use has satisfied the commercially valuable part.
Basically patents are instruments in commerce. Something was allowed to be patented, i.e. denied to rest of society, if it was shown to have a commercial value, and hence an incentive for the patent holder or agents thereof. It was believed that the benefits from an inventor implementing a patent dwarfed the negatives of denying the rest of the society from being able to freely build upon it.
Your using it for cutomers means that the patent cannot be claimed under new-use as there is nothing "new" about it, and Ray's whole article shows that the patent can't be claimed under "new" method as neither is the method new.
Guess, it means that the patent should be busted.
Or not... (Score:2, Interesting)
Without them, there is absolutely no way for web based applications to maintain state across pages, meaning that there's hardly a web application in the world that would still work.
Sheesh...
There's also some real compelling java applets too - like a Library catalogue I rememeber using once.
And Flash... Well, I tend to mostly agree with you, but oh well.
Re:I agree (Score:3, Interesting)
While a nice, extremely far-fetched thought that would work in theory, when you figure out how to replicate the content of Homestar Runner [homestarrunner.com] in text, let me know!
Re:What the hell? (Score:5, Interesting)
This may NOT save the browser (Score:4, Interesting)
IANAL (nor are probably 99% of the other people commenting), but this may not count as prior art. The important thing about prior art is that it is made up PRIOR to the patent in question. If someone patented the wheel, and I then read the patent (think blueprint) for it, I too could take a hammer, saw, chisel, etc. and scream "Look how obvious this is!"
In this case, if someone can prove they created a similar combination of program(s) prior to October 17, 1994, that would stand a much better chance of invalidating the patent. A mockup done in 2003 likely will not.
Prior Art (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I agree (Score:2, Interesting)
Similarly the case for Real Player, and Quicktime.
Re:what's really sad... (Score:3, Interesting)
For a counter-example, take a look at the Jews. They have managed to tie male intelligence into sexual desirability for thousands of years. Torah scholars get some serious action. And all of is based on a concerted propaganda effort by those same Torah scholars. You should read the stuff they write. It is a constant barage of "study the Bible and get women hanging all over you."
Sure, that sort of eugenics program has not resulted in too many Jewish supermodels, but damn if they don't make great physicists, doctors, and lawyers.
This is the road to patent reform. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I agree (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes. In the future. It will be called SVG.
Re:Such a problem (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree. In fact, I would argue quite the opposite.
So there is no doubt, let me be clear. If Microsoft is screwed over by abuse of a patent, then you might never get screwed by patent abuse.
Here on my planet, the government will do anything to protect poor Microsoft. Anything that is bad for Microsoft must be bad for everyone else too. Anything that hurts Microsoft could cripple the economy. Maybe the economy of the world. Technological innovation would stop. In fact, civilization as we know it could come to an end.
So the argument goes. (Please do not interpret anything in the previous paragraph as being my point of view, because it decidedly is _not_.)
Now those whose IQ is higher than their Karma should be able to connect the dots together.
We can moan on Slashdot forever about the broken patent system. But let an upstanding, shining example of true American greed...er..um... values such as Microsoft get screwed by patent abuse, and maybe something will happen to reform the broken patent system.
Prior Art??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Are printer (and other device) drivers all that different than plug-ins?
When I click the Print icon, aren't I in effect asking the operating system to transparently execute a separate ("plug-in") program, the printer driver, to perform a task for me?
Or am I missing the point here?
BEFORE YOU REPLY TO ANOTHER EOLAS ARTICLE... (Score:5, Interesting)
Read this!
It's a USA Today story from the cover (!) in 1996.
Important points:
Dr. Doyle (Eolas) isn't trying to squash Mozilla or anything like that. What he was hoping to do would be to force Microsoft, Sun, etc. to join an organization where they would standardize their architecture. He declared the current state of things then as a "hodgepodge", and it still is today (EJB vs. NET vs. DCOM vs. SOAP vs. agent archs). He claimed he would provide free licenses to anyone who would cooperate. He also thought maybe he'd get funding from some guy who was afriad of Microsoft or Oracle, and wanted his help to one-up what they had.
That ain't going to happen now.
I'm pretty sure he's cutting his losses and JUST going after the biggest fish in the pond.
You can also read his letter to the readership of DDJ (they had many of the same opinions as Slashdotters I've read so far).
Scroll down to the letters section [ddj.com]. You may need to sign up for access. Alternatively, I will include a quote without permission.
This guy isn't the bad guy. He's just a dude who tweaked up his web browser for medical imageing, and had a bright idea. The University hired Townsend, Townsend and Crew to file the patent, and they couldn't come up with anything at the time. Maybe the weren't Lotus users?
In any case, since this guy wasn't a CS major (Biology), he probably wouldn't have been privy to Lotus. He was an academic Unix guy, and Lotus was big in business circles. I can't blame him, and think Ray Ozzie needs to get off his soapbox.
Lotus is dead man, don't give Microsoft any ammo. Doyle wants Microsoft to start playing nice, and you're undermining that. Great way to see your vision through Ozzie; they (Ozzie and Doyle) both had the same vision and I think he fails to realize how alike their thinking and motives are.
Microsofts' are less pure.
Hahahahahahahahahaha, I know someone still using (Score:1, Interesting)
rotfl!
This was soooo funny! circa-1993!
I know someone (actually two companies, owners are related) still using windows for workgroups 3.11, ms-dos 6.22, novell 2.0, upnetone, older ms-dos, IBM PC-XT computers (8086-8088 processors) in some rooms, and a host of other oldies but goodies to run his business.
The hard drive the database is sitting on is larger and heavier than a brick, and measured in megabytes, not gigabytes.
Works for him, and he hasn't spent money on licensing in, get ready for this...decades!
Should've just come to Queens, instead of wasting time on ebay!
these are called submarine patents. (Score:2, Interesting)
Did the inventor take several years to get around to sueing Microsoft? Or did they spend a couple of years in pointless un-negotiations? Many corporations will pretend to be negotiating while sending their legal beagles trying to break the patent instead. Some companies would rather spend $10,000,000 to break a patent that the inventor only wants $500,000 for. Some inventors want to stiff companies for $100,000,000 when their invention is worth $100,000. One can find cases to support any position you want. Which is what legal briefs are supposed to do.
The Real Problem (Score:3, Interesting)
In this case, Eolas got half a BILLION dollars. I can't imagine that even if this patent has merit (I don't think it does) that the staff at Eolas have truly produced something of that worth. There is no way Eolas invested anything like that into research for their patent. Even if Eolas had a rare genius on their staff who invented something truly unique and revolutionary, no single person can produce half a BILLION dollars of worth.
Oh sure, that's just "capitalism" somebody will say. The property owner gets to pick the price. Mysterious "market forces" will sort everything out. But in the case of patents there are no market forces. Patent owners enjoy a monopoly where nobody can legally compete. The patent owners can set their prices sky-high and nobody can undercut them.
Rather than putting the onus on the patent review process to "weed out" the bad patents - which I personally believe is an impossible task - there should instead be a financial valuation done of patents before they are granted. The patent owner can document their expected earnings from the patent. If the patent owner poorly estimates the expected earnings (claims a future earning of $1mill but collects half a BILLION dollars) then something is almost certainly wrong.
This way companies (incl. Microsoft) can easily identify any patents that may financially harm them in the future and invest more effort into disproving their merit. If the patent owner truly believes their patent is worthy then they can invest more time and money into defending the patent. This is pure self-interest at work, so I have every confidence that it will work.
The current patent system is like a lottery. The fix is to make it accountable. My idea might not be practical for reasons I cannot see, but I'm convinced that something similar to it will fix the patent system.
Re:Good news, good thinking (Score:2, Interesting)
Seems to me Microsoft has an interesting out - the
Ta-Da, the plug in is now a shared library that uses the CLR, no longer a "helper application." So even if Ozzie's demo isn't sufficient, it seems Microsoft could use this approach since it seems pretty unlikely share libs are patented, though IANAL. Some might suggest that doing this is no different than running a Java applet, but Softee could certainly argue that the CLR is much more than a browser plug-in. It's too bad that the patent system is being abused in this way. Patents are supposed to promote innovation, not stifle it. This case is so outrageous, however, it may encourage favorable legislative changes.
Re:I agree (Score:3, Interesting)
My default browser is Mozilla (on W2K). I do not install Flash on it.
If I come across a site that I absolutely have to see, and it uses Flash, then I cut-and-paste the URL into IE.
Two examples: The Homestarrunner.com site, with the initial FHQWHGADS [homestarrunner.com] (fuh-who-goo-gads) email and the song [homestarrunner.com] they created as a riff on it. It's hilarious -- watch them both, in order.
"I'm buying you a pizza."
Re:I agree (Score:5, Interesting)
There are big problems here. First the Eolas patent covers technologies such as postscript. This despite the fact that the git who filled the thing was told about abundant prior art before the patent was issued. I know he was told because I was one of the people doing the telling.
The real scandal here is that the idiot judge would not allow Microsoft to argue that there was prior art. The jury was instructed to disregard the evidence of Pei Wei that he invented plug ins three years earlier.
I also happen to think that plugins suck. I hate what Javascript has done to a lot of previously usable site. Why did the idiots at netscape invent functions that allow the sender of the content to control my browser? Well yes, they were in the pocket of the content providers and they saw their market niche as being able to add corporate friendly features to the web.
It is a great pity that so few Web companies learned the lesson of Google. In the end its the users that matter.
Re:BEFORE YOU REPLY TO ANOTHER EOLAS ARTICLE... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's the same crap as can be found e.g. here [computer.org]. I.e. "use software patents to regulate competition and enforce standards". You might as well opt for introducing socialism, with the patent office becoming the ruling communist party, and M$, Sun, IBM, and, of course, Eolas, becoming state-approved monopolies.
If the guy honestly believes that he does the software industry as a whole any good by forcing it to adhere to a single "technology" that tries to put EJBs, .NET, DCOM, SOAP, agents, browser plugins and whatnot under one hood, he's a complete lunatic.
But of course, he doesn't mean anything he says. He wants to squeeze as much money as possible out of the patent system without looking too much like a bad boy, and that's about it.
Ozzie's soapbox (Score:1, Interesting)
Ozzie's demo is no different than saying that, because a certain spreadsheet application existed before a certain patented method for financial data processing, and because you can show that today you can use that old spreadsheet application to replicate the patented process, then the patent must be invalid. The spreadsheet application isn't prior art because no one actually showed the public back then precisely how to use the spreadsheet to create all of the parts of the patented invention before the patent holder did.
He's probably actually exposing himself to legal liability from people who follow his erroneous advice to ignore the plug-in patent, and wind up getting sued for patent infringement as a result.
Man I hate your example. (Score:1, Interesting)
PDF's are just downright annoying. Anything designed to make it hard for people to be able to copy/paste and search should be banished!
Re:Frivolous McDonald's lawsuit (Score:1, Interesting)
I remember this case because I was working in my family's deli when this incident happened and went to trial.
We served coffee to customers with a Bunn and a Cecilware coffee machine. When the McDonald's incident came out, I didn't take the lawyer's word for it, because I know lawyer's words are crocks of shit. I did my own testing.
The McDonalds coffee machines are set less than 5 degrees hotter than the Bunn and Cecilware machines. McDonalds is known for having hotter coffee than other places. But it's not by much. Bunn and Cecilware coffee machines are sold by the millions to restaurants and delis and grocery stores and offices and other locations that serve coffee.
Since we also cooked our own roast beef, roast pork, and other meats, food thermometers were mandated by Agriculture and Markets. One wasn't enough, since they cited us and fined us when the thermometer was ten feet away from the kitchen, in the food prep area, instead of the kitchen (it's basically a shakedown money maker can't win situation with the city and state when it comes to inspections). After that nasty little incident, we had thermometers up the wazoo. In the kitchen, in the food prep area, in the setting area, everywhere.
To make a long story short, I tested temperatures on coffee that came out of the machines. All were over what the lawyers were claiming was safe. We had regular customers that we were friends with. So without telling them, I kept a pot off the heater, to reach the lower "safe" temperature claimed by the lawyers for the woman. I sold one cup to one customer who bought coffee every morning, then walked across the street back to his home to get ready for work, then he would come back to our side of the street to wait for the bus to take him to work. He took his coffee black, which is perfect for testing temperature, as it is undiluted by milk. I did this with two other customers as well.
The first customer that lived across the street came back into the store after exiting his house to tell me there was something wrong with the coffee machine, the coffee was "cold". I gave him a free cup of coffee and told him what I did. It wasn't a surprise to him because he also worked in the industry (retail department manager) so he understood what I told him.
The next two customers were customers that took their coffee to go. They had to carry it about 1000 feet before settling into their offices to drink it. They never complained before about the temperature of the coffee. They did that day when they came back for lunch. They also got free cups of coffee the next morning. The little experiment was an eye opener for them. They were friends, so what I did wasn't an issue with them.
The bottom line is that the temperature that the lawyers were claiming was "safe" is not acceptable. Customers will simply not accept coffee that gets "cold" too quickly. I know, because I measured, using two thermometers normally used by inspectors. And I also know because I tasted the coffee myself repeatedly that day. And just after that, I went to work for a large union, where there were the mandatory coffee breaks, and workers would avoid certain coffee stands, and go specifically to others because the coffee got cold too fast in the winter while carrying it from some of the places. Since this was already on my mind, I noted that the places that were avoided were generally the places that used Mr Coffee and other consumer type coffee machines for their lower volume sales. The stands to get the coffee at were...Bunn or Cecilware!
While McDonald's coffee, at the time of the lawsuit, was hotter, it was only hotter by 5 degrees from coffee machines being sold by the millions across the country. Cecilware is an international brand, and I believe Bunn is also. Lowering the temperature 10 degrees from the Cecilware and Bunn settings was producing