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British Telecom, Hyperlinking And Mr. Englebart 94

Posted by timothy from the austin-powers-style-time-travel dept.
tewl writes: "Saw this [article] on [New Scientist] -- 'BT's hopes of enforcing its U.S. patent on Internet hyperlinking (New Scientist, 1 July, p 17) may be dashed by an old movie clip. The U.S.-based Internet Patent News Service is pointing patent lawyers to a website which says it hosts film of a prior demonstration of hyperlinking prior demonstration of hyperlinking. BT is basing its claim on a 1976 patent (4873662) that through a legal quirk remains in force until 2006. The 90-minute film was shot by Stanford University in 1968 when Douglas Englebart showed 1000 people the first mouse -- using it to click on hyperlinks.'" What's not open-and-shut here?
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British Telecom, Hyperlinking And Mr. Englebart More

British Telecom, Hyperlinking And Mr. Englebart

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  • Sometimes the patent system can actually work!!

    --
  • Who is this "Roddenburgh"? Do you mean Roddenberry, since you mention tricorders I'm wondering if you are attempting to equate writing the fiction called Star Trek with the serious business of inventing. :)

    On that note, had he (or anyone) actually thought of the idea first, then all he needed to do was apply for a patent. This is what BT is claiming to have done, which is why this demo is important, it shows that they had nothing to do with inventing this idea, and that even if they did think it up in a vacuum, that they did so several years too late.

  • Re:Broken link Demo (Score:3)

    by Misch ( 158807 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @01:33PM (#746382) Homepage
    More specifically Real Video Demonstration [stanford.edu] of Hyperlinking.

  • Re:Vannevar Bush (Score:3)

    by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @01:41PM (#746383) Homepage

    You are probably thinking of the hypothetical "memex" device proposed in his article As We May Think [theatlantic.com] that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly [theatlantic.com] in 1945. He did not demonstrate anything, he only described it.

  • Fascinating.

    Somehow I think Heinlein wouldn't have minded using one as a sexual novelty in a sleazy motel, however, given his later fiction.

    No offense, though. He's the man.

    -m

  • The chorded keyboard that Engelbart introduced at The Demo(tm)[1] was used in conjunction with the mouse. During his Turing Award acceptance speech a few years ago he talked about the system.

    His original design was to have both hands working when people would use the mouse. One to point and click and the other to issue commands (chorded keyboard commands like copy and paste etc). When you were generating text, he figured that you'd have both hands on the standard keyboard (it's faster than the one handed chorded keyboard). The chorded keyboard he used was capable of generating every keystroke a normal keyboard could do, but was designed to be used primarily to augment the mouse.

    He's said that he was a bit dissapointed that the only thing a lot of people got out of the demo was the idea of the mouse (not networking, not hyperlinking, etc). He really wanted the chorded keyboard to be implemented with the mouse.

    [1] Arguably the most important computer demonstration ever. In 1968 he began the demonstration by saying, "If in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly responsive, how much value could you derive from that?" Then he went on to demonstrate the future of computing. The guy was WAY ahead of his time.
  • He was??? That's surprising, because if there is any theme that runs throughout most of his science fiction its SEX.
    Yes, but never sleazy sex.

    The protagonists of that class of Heinlein novel do not cheat on their spouses in motels or Las Vegas casinos, with or without waterbeds. Rather, they and their spouses and their friends get together for a friendly Sunday afternoon orgy; usually in the refresher or other hot-tub equivalent.

  • >The person who invents the corporate-whapping mechanism will become my one true personal hero...

    I've applied for the patent already ;-)

  • This story was kicking around inside BT about twelve months ago. The office gossip then was that BT had been aproached by a legal company who had dug this up and where offering to take it on a no win no fee basis.

    Apparently BT's own people weren't aware that it owned a patent on hyperlinking (after a fashion :)

    Please note this was office gossip, it may be inaccurate or just plain wrong!
  • That would be because the UK patent has expired.
  • It's not. That may, however, be true to some extent for trademarks.
  • but Xanadu probably wouldn't have worked anyway.

    HUH? What exactly do you mean? As an alternative hypertext system, it's been opensourced (see udanax etc. in my original) and is functional and scalable.

    If you mean that it would never have been socially accepted, well, I won't even get into that. But let's just say that the Xanadu idea is hardly dead... that the Web is less than a decade old... and that a number of us don't intend to let it survive another decade :)

    Finally: as far as the 'the Web is what Ted was trying to prevent' argument goes -- I don't know that Ted specifically said that before the fact, but it's accurate. Ted and others saw the possible mess that is the Web in the mid-60s, and tried to work around it... IMHO, they didn't succeed in understanding the core issues of knowledge management... too data driven...

    In any case, BT's patent is on things Ted, Doug, and many others were aware of, and had demonstrated in detail, by the mid-sixties. The only difference is that the BT guys (like the Mozilla guys) didn't see the overall picture that Ted did.

    And the only difference between the Mozilla guys and the BT guys, that the BT guys didn't do a damned thing about what they had thought up.

  • They may be big, but they will have to fight Microsoft, Netscape, and enyone else who makes a browser, or web publisher package.

    This technique usually works when it's a large company going against an individual or small company.

    But sometimes David can win against Goliath.

  • Actually read the patent (Score:4)

    by Great_Geek ( 237841 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @12:23PM (#746393)
    This first time the story came up, I actually looked up the BT patent. As it turns out, they did not patent the hyperlink as so many people have been flaming. The patent is about hyperlinks over the telephone network. As I recall, the initial news release said BT is only going after the ISP and not sites; this makes sense given their patent.

    The BT patent may or may not stand up, and it may be Good or Evil, these are all up for discussion; but at least flame them for what they are doing.
  • Even if they could somehow prove their ludicrous claim, then what? Every time I author a page I send them money for each link [goatse.cx]? Or better yet, every time I click a link I owe them? Imagine having to pay for each visit to the above. there's a distasteful thought (although having to pay for creating a goatse.cx link [goatse.cx] would certainly improve slashdot).

    I guess, in light of how unworkable either of my above examples are, we would just have to shut down this whole web thing and appologize. I'm sure that would go through pretty quickly without any snags or complaints </sarcasm>

  • Cavemen invented hyperlinking (Score:3)

    by TBHiX ( 26224 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @12:23PM (#746395) Homepage

    It's true! Picture it, many years ago...

    Ogg (looking at stick propped under huge boulder): "Hmf. Writing on stick say, 'Push here to view Cave Defense Strategy.'"

    Mogg: "Ug. I push." (press)

    *** RRRRRUUUUUMMMMBLEE ****

    -TBHiX-

  • Sorry to veer off topic, but does anybody know where I could find more information on the chord key set used in clip 3 [stanford.edu]? There are some other images of it on the site, but I haven't been able to find an explanation of how it worked. Was it a total keyboard replacement or more like a macro input device?
  • I'm glad to see them get ass fucked on this one. How dare they think they could get credit for good ol' fashioned USA technology.

    Fuck you pasty faced bastards. And tell Blair fluoride isn't a bad thing.
  • NLS is the whole system (hyperlinking, video conferencing, etc.) that Engelbart demonstrated. According to Stanford's description of the 1968 video, Doug had already thought about making this available via the internet:

    In this segment Doug explains how NLS will be used as the infrastructure for ARPA networks experiment in creating the Network Information Center.

    Now all we need to show is proof that someone, somewhere, thought to directly access the ARPA network before 1976 via phone lines.

    - Sam

  • Everyday it gets worst.

    Yes, yes it does. And every day, the pots call the kettle black. Sheesh.

    On top of that, it's the people submitting the stories to be posted that are making the mistakes, not the editors.

  • Of course, anyone who confuses Adobe with a little house of mud probably isn't too apt at clicking either.

    Hey Poindexter, Adobe is a little house of mud as well as the name of a software company. The gaffe was spelling it Abode.

  • Lets all do the "Blow Me Dance!" You gyrate your hips and go "Blow me blow me blow me!" Everyone now! "Blow me blow me blow me!" And the chorus for Digital Convergence "Blow me blow me blow me!" And for the Supreme Court for not hearing the Microsoft Case and wasting another $10 Million of the Taxpayer's Money! "Blow me blow me blow me!" Oh yes! There are so many people in the world who just need to fucking blow me!
  • I was under the impression from previous interactions with patents that once they have been in the public domain and no actions have been taken by the company to prevent it or detur it then the neglegence on the companies part allows the patent to become public domain. Can anyone say if this is fact or not?
  • Do you mean Roddenberry, since you mention tricorders I'm wondering if you are attempting to equate writing the fiction called Star Trek with the serious business of inventing. :)
    Actually, a description of an invention in published science fiction apparently can militate against a patent being granted when someone else builds it in the real world. Prior to the invention of the waterbed, Robert A. Heinlein described it in one of his books. Later, someone built the first real-world waterbed and applied for a patent. No can do; Heinlein's description of the device in a novel had placed the idea in the public domain, thus rendering it unpatentable.

    (Curiously enough, the ever-practical Heinlein had envisioned waterbeds being used for long-term hospital patients [to avoid bedsores] and as acceleration couches for space travel. He was apparently a bit put out to discover them being considered a sexual novelty for sleazy motels ....)

  • They alswyas have them their. That's why the UK, which could have the best IT infrastructure in the western world, has one of the crappiest.
  • A few weeks ago here on /., there was a story showing three of the clips from this presentation. I ended up seaching a while before I found the whole thing, but I tell ya what, it was worth it.

    I am not sure how much of all of the stuff in the videos were actually in use in '68, such as the database and the way you could jump from level to level, but I have a feeling that everything presented was just wowing the folks who were in the auditorium that day.

    Looking back at the presentation, everything done there is still done today, with the exception of that weird ass 5 key keyboard Doug was using. Ya got email with message threads, relational databases, the mouse, multi media video, networking to a far away computer... I find something new each time I watch it.

    But, whoever it was that decided NOT to make the computer go "bbeep! buzz! honk!" every time it started computing something - that is the person who's hand I want to shake! That would drive me nuts after a while - come to think of it, I think I would rather listen to that all day than the Win9x startup music.


    Vote Nader [votenader.org]
  • Since no one has mentioned it, it bears saying that Ted Nelson and others were also working on this stuff since Ted coined the term 'hypertext' in '62, and this eventually became Xanadu:
    http:www.xanadu.com [xanadu.com]

    and (in a different incarnation of sorts) was led by Roger Gregory:
    http:www.udanax.org [udanax.org]

    and finally incorporated into AutoDESK in '88, at the urging of John Walker:
    Statement for the Autodesk/Xanadu Press Conference [fourmilab.ch]

    Unfortunately, AutoDESK (no longer under John's direct control) killed Xanadu in 92, of all times, not seeing any future in hypertext -- which is a shame, since IMHO Xanadu was and is much better than the mess which is the web.

    Roger and Ted are certainly bemused by the BT thing... and would probably be more bemused if BT won :)

  • Nah isn't possible, cause there is prior art in the 1-click patent. (The click thingy :-))
  • no, because they didn't invent those. They invented the technology (the device, not the idea) that originally allowed hyperlinked data over the telephone system. Doing something over a network IS substantially different from doing it on a single device, because somebody has to Actually Do It.

    Y'see, I bet there's all sorts of footage hanging around of various loopy-loo flying cars, but when someone actually invents a working, viable flying car, they'll be able to patent the technology they used.

  • No, no, no. What we need is a patent on *0*-click shopping. I'm not sure what's the best way to implement it, though. We have two options, as I see it:

    1. Mouse-Over Shopping - this new, revolutionary system is a wonderful aid to those too lazy to click. Just run your mouse over our product listing, and they will be billed, packaged, and shipped without your having to lift (or depress) a finger!

    or

    2. Predictive Shopping - Based on your previous purchases, our cutting-edge neural network will send you the items you want *before* you know you want them.

    Which seems more promising?
  • yes, but you see, their version, didn't work. BT's (perhaps Englebart's) did.

    Similarly, when someone invents a machine shaped like a telephone box that can actually travel through time, you will not expect to see the BBC getting any royalties.

  • errrrrmmmmmm ..... The Post Office, as it then was, also "knew about hyperlinking before the WWW", inventing it for their Prestel system.

    If anyone would bother to read the patent, rather than just going "I know what a hyperlink is, so I understand all the issues involved here!", then you would see that this is not by any means an open and shut case; BT may actually be in the right.

    You see, whatever Rob Malda thinks, BT are not claiming to have patented the idea of hyperlinks. For a very good reason -- you can't patent ideas. What the Post Office did patent was a specific schema for a device which allowed information to be accessed using hyperlinks over the telephone system, in a certain way.

    In much a similar way, whoever invents the flying car (in the sense of producing an actually working, commercially viable version) will be able to patent the technology they use to build it their way, in spite of all the footage that no doubt exists of weird and wacky flying car ideas. It so happens that BT patented their way of doing this, and, without knowing, the inventors of the Internet happened upon the idea of doing it the same way. If you independently come up with someone's patented idea, you're in the hole for a patent violation.

    Note that BT doesn't have a claim against publishers of hyperlinks; they aren't using BT's patented system.

    I hope, without hope, that this is now clear.

  • Nooo....it was Al Gore. Right? ;)
  • This is brilliant! With your mouse-over patent,
    you could claim Amazon was infringing every time someone moved their mouse over the "add to my shopping cart" button.

    As a logical conclusion to making shopping
    completely effort free, how about patenting No Shopping at All Shopping; The consumer justs sits at home watching television in a comfortable chair and waits to die. The e-commerce company just deducts money straight from their bank account. No user interface required.
  • The article has a bad link in it - nasty little parenthesis and period at the end!
  • Kinda sed some words twice and added a few characters at the end of the URL there (what of "Use Preview Button!" don't people get?)

    http://sloan.stanford.edu/Mous eSi te/1968Demo.html [stanford.edu]
  • Nothing like having something "grandfathered) out from under you...


    öööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööööö

  • Tesla.... (Score:3)

    by azephrahel ( 193559 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @11:54AM (#746417)
    When some of the first computing patents started going through, they relized that alot of their ideas were previously patented, or partially in some cases by a certain mr Nicola Tesla. This is reportedly where the precident started to only looking back a hundred years or so for patents. IMHO they should revoke all patents and go back through them one by one, beacuse they'd end up finding that half the pantents in the past 10 years are probably invalid due to either prior use or even prior patent. But then again the government doens't ask me ;)

  • *Whap* Stupid Company! (Score:5)

    by Electric Angst ( 138229 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @11:57AM (#746418)
    Don't you wish you had a stick you could hit corporations with...

    *Whap!* Bad British Telecom! No Patent!
    *Whap!* Bad Amazon! No One-Click!

    The person who invents the corporate-whapping mechanism will become my one true personal hero...
    --

  • The reason why it isn't open and shut is that BT is a giant monopoly with it's fingers in everybody's pie. Of course it is going to try to use its mega-resources to try and fight this. And if it's strong enough and can yell loud enough they think that people will eventually see things there way.

    After all, it isn't about money, it's about who controls the internet.

  • Wait A sec... (Score:3)

    by LordHunter317 ( 90225 ) <{askutt} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday September 28, 2000 @11:57AM (#746420)
    But the thing is, that was NLS hyperlinking and this is &lt;i&gt;Internet&lt;/i&gt; hyperlinking. I mean, come on, the two must be sooo different! Why should the patent not be enforced? I mean then, we can sue every person who's every made a webpage and only be the biggest company on Earth? Really now! :)<p>
  • Again, I must ask, "Does anyone proofread these damn post before they go up." This is the second obvious mistake _today_. Everyday it gets worst. It's hard to take anything posted here seriously when the people who run the site don't even double check their typing.

  • When they win.... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I certainly hope they intend to split the money made from their lawsuits with Al Gore. If it wasn't for him inventing the Internet, there would not be any reason to use hyperlinks! :o)
  • It's slightly offtopic, but it looks like that BT's "solid" experience in hyperlinking didn't prevent them from leaving a huge security hole in their Talk21 service:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_9 46000/946717.stm [bbc.co.uk]

    This confirms the fundamental principle of life:

    What You Get Is What You Deserve

  • Re:The very idea is insane... !!! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    No, you see, that cad Roddenberry stole it all from the great Roddenburgh.

  • BT is crazy if they think that they can patent hippolugging. My great grandfather invented hippolugging and placed it in the public domain in the late 1800's. Here is an extract from his journal, which was published by the Natural Geogrampa Society (emphasis added)...

    "Having felled the great beast, we were faced with a perplexing dilemna, how to bring it henceforth to the base camp for shipment to the Natural History Museum. Conversing feverishly with the porters in their primitive tongue, we were eventually able to work out a solution. Two largish trees were cut and stripped, their bark used to construct a sort of sling to place beneath the monstrous creature. A net was employed to support this sling, and attached to the long posts by some stout hemp cord. Planting the end of the posts a short distance ahead of the animal, we contrived to use their length as a lever to LUG THE BULL HIPPO FORWARD some 6 or 7 metres at a time."

  • Re:Editing (Score:3)

    by Xerithane ( 13482 ) <xerithane@@@nerdfarm...org> on Thursday September 28, 2000 @12:46PM (#746427) Homepage Journal
    not the editors
    WTF is an editors job then?
    Hm, editor; one who edits. Hence, they should edit whatever post is going to be posted. Of course, anyone who confuses Adobe with a little house of mud probably isn't too apt at clicking either. It is getting horrendous. Slashdot tries to push itself as a journalism site, yet all they really do is publish other peoples gibberish with links.
    Bring Slashdot back to what made it popular, a link site with a message board attached to it. It was a portal, and that was what it was good at. It should not be a news site. It should not be for journalism. The only time I admired the journalism on slashdot was when Jon Katz posted a feature. While I seldom agree with Jon Katz anti-witchhunt and extremist point of view -- it was/is journalism.
    The "journalistic" content of slashdot now consists of interviews with their friends and collegues, and occasionally someone with higher visibility that has input from the message board instead of Slashdot "journalists".
    I'm finding myself looking at other sites like linuxtoday.com [linuxtoday.com] for real nerd-news. They just link, and that's what Slashdot did to make it popular.
    I suppose I can't blame them, the old philosphy of do it till your popular then do what you want seems in effect. Unfortunately a lot of the people who made slashdot what it is today are getting fed up with the constant idiocy spewing forth from the posters.
    The only person that I think doesn't make routine mistakes and blanket idiotic statements is CmdrTaco because it seems he still holds the ideal of slashdot there, post links with summary and if you have something to add, add it -- otherwise just let the link be.

    [phpwebhosting.com]
    nerdfarm.org
  • I know bugger-all about patent law. But in UK, producing a prototype is a requirement before the patent is granted. I think. Perhaps. I read it somewhere once. Sort of thing.

    It would be nice if a lawyer familiar with UK patent law could give some insight. But I doubt if any UK patent lawyers read /.

    <rant>
    Perhaps the /. editors would like to contact a lawyer familiar with UK patent law for an opinion?
    <cynicism>
    Or would that constitute 'journalism' and therefore upset the VA/Andover lawyers?
    </cynicism>
    </rant>
  • I believe patent filings are already required to contain an "implementation description", or something like that which demonstrates how to build a functional instance of the principle(s) being patented. After all, w/o that what's to stop me from filing a patent on a teleportation booth? (the implementation is left as an exercise for the user...)

  • Simpsons? (Score:3)

    by omnifrog ( 93180 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @12:50PM (#746430)
    Wasn't there a Simpsons episode about this? Some bum claims to have invented Itcy and Scratchy, but the film strip that proves this burns up?

    Mirror the movie quickly before it's too late!!!

  • Shut (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Q: What's not open-and-shut here?

    A: British Telecom's Mouth

  • BT would have to prove that 1976 1968, which would be rather difficult.
    ----

  • Re:*Whap* Stupid Company! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why is it that everyone blames the company for exploiting this whole in the patent system. They organize boycots and bitch and moan to no end.
    No one seems to want to fix the actual problem by changing the patent office so it doesn't issue these bogus patents.

    Yet, in a totaly analogous situation, Microsoft's Visual Basic security holes in Outlook, we take the exact opposite stance. It's totaly Microsoft's fault that they leave this hole open. The jerks that write the "I Love You" worms are just accepted because "someone was bound to do it eventually".

  • Maybe they were trying to avoid infringing on BT's patent, by creating a novel way to provide hyperlinks.

    Go for it slashdot, patent your new system!
    -

  • IIRC the video in question was actually shot at a convention in San Francisco, with Engelbart operating NLS via a 2-way hookup with SRI at Stanford. . .over the phone lines. . .
  • A published description is sufficient to invalidate a future patent.

    --
  • He [Heinlein] was apparently a bit put out to discover them being considered a sexual novelty for sleazy motels

    He was??? That's surprising, because if there is any theme that runs throughout most of his science fiction its SEX (e.g. Friday, Stranger from a strange land, I shall fear no evil, To sail beyond the sunset, etc etc etc).

  • Yes! Yes! That is what I was refering to. Thank you for posting the link to the article (my main familiarity with the article if from it's too brief discription in Stephen Levy's book 'Insanely Great'. As the other responder to your comment puts it "even a discription is enough to invalidate a patent." (Not a pure quote). What I am wondering is: Is that so? Would the fact that Mr. Bush described such a thing really be enough to fight this patent?
  • The person who invents the corporate-whapping mechanism will become my one true personal hero...

    And then watch them patent the idea. Anyone tries to whap someone else gets two whaps and a lawsuit. In the end, we'll be wondering "Who whaps the whappers?"

    -B

  • Yes. Thanks.
    That is what I was wondering.
    Not being a lawyer and all, I was wondering if the mere fact that someone else had conceptualized the whole thing would be enough to discredit a patent on hyperlinking.

  • Aside from the fact that Xanadu apparently _did_ work, according to another poster, you don't actually have to generate a working copy to create a patent (or prior art), you just have to describe a practical way to do it. The BBC won't be getting royalties because they never explained the mechanism behind the travelling policebox.

    Robert Heinlein, however, did generate prior art for the waterbed when he wrote "Stranger in a strange land", even though he never actually built one.

    - David
  • I always knew that he demonstrated the mouse in 1968 but I didn't know he had demonstrated such a complete system!

    I used to think that Xerox PARC had done a lot of innovating to come up with the Alto in the early 70's but Doug's stuff at SRI seems to have beaten them to the punch.

  • It's called a union look into it. Corporations hate and fear unions like nothing else. If you really want to whack a corporation go unionize their employees. Be careful though they will whack you back realy hard if you try something like that.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • Re:*Whap* Stupid Company! (Score:3)

    by Bob Uhl ( 30977 ) on Friday September 29, 2000 @04:42AM (#746444)
    A union is just as bad as a monopoly--it is a monopoly on labour. Screws with the economic system something fierce. They were desperately needed when the monopolists and oligopolists of the last century abused their positions. If we could dissolve the megacorps and return to a free market, we would not have any need for the unions.

    Not to mention that unions are just as corrupt and self-serving as any corporation. Take a look at the performing industry for an example; to move a picture on a set takes three members of three unions! If one is to show a truck in a film, a teamster mus tbe hired to sit on his hands during filming--even if it is background and already on the street. Unions are no better than the corps. At least a corporation is honest--it wants to increase shareholder value. Unions claim to be for fairness, but really would love to get $100,000/yr. and a thirty-minute break every hour for every janitor and machinist.

    Don't deceive yourself--no-one in this world is pure. Not you, not me, not Bush, not Gore, not Nader, not corporations and not unions.

  • Why bother to patent hyperlinks, especially when it runs out in '06? Does BT think it can take control of the web in six years?

    What's the point? What will they gain?

  • Thanks for the info. A Google search for 'chord keyset' also turned up a number of sites, including one that had an image of Engelbart still using the keyset today.

    Watching the video yesterday really filled me with a complete sense of awe. It was a demonstration of vision that completely lacked the cynicism and guarded nature of today's creators of "intellectual property". But, I guess that's what happens when your goal is to change the world and not just change your market value.

  • > After all, w/o that what's to stop me from filing a
    > patent on a teleportation booth?

    The oodles of prior art in comic books and bad SF movies? :)
  • It was not a failure of their vision. It was a failure of a group of people, with many ideas, to finish and release a product from within a secretive business enviroment.
  • The poster wanted to stick with which to whack corporations. Well guess what like it or not unions are the only stick you can use (OK maybe the the trial lawyers too). The govt will not do it, the shareholders don't mind anything as longs as they make money. The fact remains. If a corporation is misbehaving in your opinion and you can't afford to hire a lawyer to sue them or you have no standing for a suit then there is only one thing you can do. Go hang out in front of the place and pass out union literature. There is no other way to whack a corporation.
    You seem to think that the only way to fight a bully is with a pure virgin and this is not true. It takes powerful and mean people to fight other powerful and mean people. Corporations are powerful and mean and so are the unions that's the way it's gotta be or one would roll ver the other.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • I imagine they would fight back, but with much bigger stick...

    *Shmack!* Bad stick!
    *Whap!*Shmack!*Slap!*

    --
  • I read the original article on slashdot when this came out and every since then i have been thinking that is probably the worst example of stupidity ive ever seen.. The very idea that you can own clicking on something that takes you somewhere else is like saying Roddenburgh owns half the things he thought up years ago... he had 3.5 inch floppys pretty close years before they showed up and he could easily argue that he owns the ideas of things like PDAs or various medical devices that (tricorder) I'm not a pattent specialist but if i were an employee of a company that claimed to have a pattent on something like this or the look of a computer I would seriously consider the reasons that i was still working for them.. :(* The Country will be a lot better off after the next revolution... are you ready?

  • Vannevar Bush (Score:4)

    by FPhlyer ( 14433 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @12:04PM (#746453) Homepage
    I think Vannevar Bush (is that spelling right?) demonstrated the basic /concepts/ of hyperlinking back in the 1940's (although the actual technologies involved did not exist at the time. Would this, or would it not, be an example of "prior art"? (YES. This is an invitation for further discussion on the subject.)
  • forget the stick. first drive/fly/walk to redmond, then ... disable surveilance ... no witnesses ... and when rigor mortis sets in you can whack them with their own cruel leader.

  • Why doesn't BT just give up? (Score:4)

    by AFCArchvile ( 221494 ) on Thursday September 28, 2000 @12:05PM (#746455)
    Their tactics were as unethical as an ex post facto law, but it's the other way around, chronologically. Here, they were creating a patent before a system could be invented to run the subject of the patent. I think that there should be a rule for new patent applicants that the subject of the patent in question should be demonstrated somehow, be it a prototype or otherwise. If a rule like this already exists, then I'd at least be happy for that.
  • The person who invents the corporate-whapping mechanism will become my one true personal hero...

    Unless, of course, they patent it and sue you for using the mechanism without signing your soul over to them...

  • Has anyone checked on a *gasp* TWO click purchasing patent? Is maybe three-click still up for grabs?

    I'm still waiting on my patent for breathing. My edge is that it's an inhale to exhale loop. The rest of you better start listening to REM's "Try Not to Breathe"...

  • I assume, then, that they have also now applied for patents for using hyperlinks over ethernet, using hyperlinks over cable modems, using hyperlinks over DSL, using hyperlinks over wireless broadband, using hyperlinks over sattelite... come on, at what point does this become so absurd as to be laughable? Doing something over a network is NOT substantially different than doing it on a single device!
  • If my memory [slashdot.org] serves me right, this could be a clever fraud!
  • Funny how when nobody uses something it's thrown in the cold like a peice of trash, but when the potential for dollar'$ is there then everyone wants a peice of the action. --Toq
  • The patent is about hyperlinks over the telephone network.

    "To lodge a software patent, press 1.
    To speak to your attourney, press 2.
    If you have a horde of angry programmers on your doorstep, press 3..."

  • For years we used an integrated office suite called Enable where I work. I know for a fact that starting with version 3, circa 1989 or so, the complete documentation was shipped right in with the app, and it was all hypertext, sort of like hard coded web pages without images, and it worked exactly like the web except the documents were all on the local machine.

    "I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up

  • Well, first of all, a comment on the term "prior art." Anything related to an invention that came before it is prior art. It doesn't necessarily mean the patent is invalid. Simple example: if you have invented the push-button telephone, the rotary-dial telephone is prior art, but that does not invalidate your patent on the push-button telephone.

    If what is claimed in the patent has been invented previously, then this is what is known to patent attorneys as "novelty-destroying prior art," i.e., something that shows the invention was not novel, one of the requirements for a valid patent. What most /.ers mean when they say "prior art" is actually "novelty-destroying prior art."

    I've long since given up trying to get /.ers to use this terminology correctly, but I will still do so.

    So Bush's 1940s paper is certainly "prior art" in the legal sense I mention above. The real question, then is whether it is novelty-destroying prior art.

    The first claim of the patent reads:

    1. A digital information storage, retrieval and display system comprising: a central computer means in which plural blocks of information are stored at respectively corresponding locations, each of which locations is designated by a predetermined address therein by means of which a block can be selected, each of said blocks comprising a first portion containing information for display and a second portion containing information not for display but including the complete address for each of plural other blocks of information; plural remote terminal means, each including

    (a) modem means for effecting input/output digital data communication with said central computer means via the telephone lines of a telephone network,
    (b) local memory for locally storing digital data representing at least the first portion of the selected block of information received via said modem means from the central computer,
    (c) display means for visually displaying such a locally stored first portion of a block of information and
    (d) key pad means connected to communicate data to at least said modem means for manual entry of keyed digital data; and further memory means being provided as a part of said central computer means for receiving and storing said second portion of the block of information selected by a particular terminal means in response to the selection of the block and when its respective first portion is transmitted to that terminal means for display, said central computer means utilizing keyed digital data from that particular terminal means of less extent than any one of said complete addresses for another block of information but nevertheless uniquely indicative of one of the complete addresses contained in said portion of the block of information which contains the first portion then being displayed by that particular terminal means for selectively accessing the part of said further memory means associated with that particular terminal means and for supplying the complete address of the next block of information which is to be retrieved for that particular terminal means and utilized for display purposes at that terminal means.

    In order to be novelty-destroying prior art, Bush's paper has to describe an invention with all of the elements listed above. A general description of the concepts of hyperlinking isn't enough--it has to describe something which exactly matches what's described above.

    Now, for a full analysis, you have to look at each of the seven claims in the patent. In determining the validity of a patent, each claim stands or falls on its own--think of each claim as a mini-patent in its own right. While we speak of invalidating a patent--which does happen in toto on occasion--it's more common in patent challenges for some claims in a patent to be struck down while others are upheld. But for any claim to be invalidated on the basis of lack of novelty, you must have a description of an invention which has all the elements described in that particular claim.

  • They could quite easily do something similar to the strategy of Unisys with the gif patent. Rather than try to destroy or control a technology (which they no doubt know they would never get right) they could legally charge big, rich companies to use their innovative "hyperlink" technology.

    One good candidate is CNN. Enormous company (time-warner) with lots of web sites (cnn.com plus hundreds of sites all over the world.) Charge them a smallish monthly fee for each web page (.htm file essentially) that has hyperlinks on it. Do the same for a number of large-ish companies (say, about 50 to 200 companies) that find it easier to just pay (don't make the fee *too* high) than try to fight a legal battle. If you're not too pushy, and if your rates are relatively reasonable, you can make quite a lot of money and not have anybody try to challenge you in court. Ask Unisys.

    I would probably do the same if I was them. I'd make more than enough to retire a very rich man in the year 2006. Naturally BT isn't an individual though, so they might see it a little differently, but money is money. And there's the old adage, "theres no such thing as bad publicity".

  • ARPANET *was* over phone lines (at least all the site interconnects). IIRC, from reading _Where_Wizards_Stay_Up_Late_, they were using 56k leased lines from AT&T. You don't get much more phone oriented than AT&T in 1968. Jon
  • Interesting note on the waterbed idea. I'd never heard that before. A quick search on google turned up some evidence that even he wasn't the first to think it up. And a quick search at the USPTO web site turns up a multitude of waterbed patents, some that cite prior art far older than Heinlein. Typically a patent is a very explicit description of a process or construction, the type of specificity a science fiction story is likely to lack. This might make some ideas harder to patent, but given the "would you like fries and a drink with that patent?" attitude the USPTO seems to have these days...
  • We visited Doug in early 1968 or late 1967, then went back to Brown and continued to work on Hypertext for the IBM/360, completely inspired by him. Years later I was agast (and still am) at what Xerox PARC claimed to have invented. I guess that BT is just picking up the tradition.

    It seems to me that the basic chord keyboard idea is due to be re-invented for use with things like PDAs and cellphones that are too small to have a QWERTY keyboard.

  • Hehe! Unless those [ ] marks used in this story are actually there for some other reason, that I've possibly missed, which wouldn't be suprising, then it looks like Everything2 [everything2.com] has permeated into timothy's soul. ;)
  • Yes, they can patent the specific technology that makes the car fly, but they cannot patent 'cars that fly.' IANAL
  • Well, LordHunter, are you sure you didn't mean this is Internet hyperlinking?

    Malformed HTML aside (hint, forget MSFT IE coding), the problem is a runaway patent system that serves only to stifle innovation and reward the megacorporations.

    Like the ones I invest in. Why do you think Pharmaceutical companies and Tech companies reap such undeserved rewards - because they can get patents for incredibly obvious things, and extend copyright far beyond the grave.

  • Hi,
    Just check the clip N.7 on Stanford [stanford.edu] and decide for yourselves.
    Quite amusing, isn't it? It looks like... mmm... something called... Internet?
    Come on, you BT guys. If you want to be rich, work. A lot. But do not pretend to own something taht is not yours.
  • Maybe the DeCSS Judge actually knew about this patent, and was just trying to protect us from being sued! We should all thank him! =-)
  • I prefer to use the term "whore", thank you very much.

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