Eolas Sues World + Dog For AJAX Patent 647
helfrich9000 writes "Eolas has filed suit against 23 companies (guess where), including Adobe, Amazon.com, Apple, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, JPMorgan, and Playboy. At issue are a pair of patents (US 7,599,985 and US 5,838,906), one of which (the '906) was successfully used in litigation against Microsoft Corp for a $565 million judgement. Says Dr. Michael D. Doyle, chairman of Eolas, 'We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources. Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what's fair.'"
laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what's fair.
There is ridiculous dishonesty in this assertion.
Of course profiting off someone else's work is unfair. Nothing about what the litigant or the defendants have done or will do relates in any way with "fair". If the world were "fair" every single human would have as an inalienable right free access to decent food, housing, healthcare, and security and working beyond that would be an optional choice to better their life. Humanity is far, far from this ideal, and everything we do now in the business world is *nothing* about fair, it is about power and capital, and having long chains of other humans working for the profit of those few who have learned how to escape or work the system. Remember more than half of your planet's population still farms their food by hand, and dies in large numbers when there are droughts.
"Profiting from someone else's innovation" is at the very basic essence of working capitalism. It an the assumption driving nearly all investment. Using capital to buy a stock, and having that stock rise in value, has the effect of making a profit off the wealth creation and innovation in that company. I don't take a position for or against that system it is highly efficient, when it works, at allocating resources and creating significant development.
But even beyond the nature of business and profit, these folks have gone down into the depths of corporate IP litigation, where the idealistic light of "fair" shines like smelly dirt. Lawsuits rarely have much to do with a high notion of justice; they are what you can pay for, and what you can win. To assert that ones actions are about "fair" when filing a corporate IP litigation lawsuit is patently absurd and frankly laughable.
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> There is ridiculous dishonesty in this assertion.
I bet they didn't pay Tim Berners-Lee anything
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You're more than welcome to grow your own food, build your own shelter and live healthy. Or is it only "fair" if someone else is forced to provide those things for you?
Re:laughable (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Slashdot: :(
How do you mod an entire thread off-topic?
Re:laughable (Score:5, Informative)
Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" cf levels on Physiology and Safety.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Informative)
Maslow never proposed a social utopia where all of his D-needs were met by society or government. In fact, he describes self-actualization as a "motivator", i.e. what makes people achieve more success in life for themselves. His theories are generally accepted as theories of personality and motivation, not social or societal ideals.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Informative)
Maslow's first level is breathing, food, water, etc. His second level includes employment, health, and property.
He assumes you actually have a functional society before you start wondering about self-esteem and stuff.
Sure, he doesn't say we should build a social Utopia provided by a magically government. But, he would probably say that a Feudal system, for example, wouldn't even have his top two D-needs.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
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Heck, why stop there.
It means you don't get food or water to live while a rich person somewhere is throwing food away.
It means you don't have a right to keep your property or your family if someone else is powerful enough to take them away from you.
Which means by hobbe's leviathan, you and your 19 best poor buddies rise up every time it gets unfair enough and cut people's heads off, beat them to death in mobs, and other behavior. Because the asshats didn't have enough sense to keep things even remotely fai
Re:laughable (Score:4, Insightful)
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Provide me with a house (free), food (free), and transportation anywhere I want (free), and my sex change operation (free).
Basic (depending on who you ask) is subject to "negotiation" and political whims.
Here is what society should "Provide" ... Common Defense. Usually against tyrants, including left wing ones who typically live in ivory towers, thinks everyone else is stupid, and the rules they make up for everyone else don't apply to them. You know, like the people meeting in Copenhagen regarding AWG caus
Re:laughable (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxing and spending on "social" programs are exactly how our modern society has been built. At least in Canada, our "evil" taxes pay for the development of speculative ideas (public universities), fund a healthy workforce (public healthcare), allow unpopular and uncomfortable artistic expression (artists' grants), and provide a motivation for reporting the truth regardless of who's footing the bill (public broadcasting). Even in the states, some of your most significant developments, including building the Internet (DARPA), going to the moon (NASA) and harnessing atomic energy (Manhattan Project) have been publicly funded.
The problem with the "every person for themselves" attitude is that every person is never for themselves. Sure it starts out with everyone on a more or less equal footing. But eventually, over generations, you get a series of feedback loops. Everyone starts equal, and then a few enterprising individuals create their own wealth. This leads to them passing it on from generation to generation, giving their children more opportunities, better education and better health care. Soon you end up back where you started with an obscenely rich, but relatively small, group that controls most of the power and wealth.
The fundamental mistake most Libertarians make, in my opinion, is that they don't realize that unless there are social equalizers (like public health care, or public research) then their ideal society quickly becomes an aristocracy when in the context of normal human behaviour - that is, investing the most amount of resources into the survival of your families, instead of the society as a whole. This is a good short-term, survival-based reaction, but in a long-term stable society it is actually detrimental. The irony is that for Libertarianism to survive it requires a strong middle class, while it promotes a society where the middle class is eroded as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Funny)
Of course I feel an obligation, which is why I donate money to help those in need. We libertarians tend to draw the line at enforcement, though, believing that in a truly civil society force is only used to stop those who would use force on others. It's called the principle of non-initiation of force.
A truly civil society can only exist when enough people of goodwill make free choices to help others. The whole struggle should be in the convincing of others to do good, rather than in expecting a strong-arm government to make us good. Enforcement of such has never worked, and the more you enforce, the less civil the society becomes.
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Why would, or should, we be obligated to provide anything to another person? How is that different, than, say, someone being obligated to work in my field (for my profit)? It isn't.
We, as civilized people, are obligated to listen to our conscience. Part of what makes a conscience a conscience is the discretion to know when conscientious behavior is appropriate - socially, economically, and morally.
Is it moral to kill? No. Was it moral to kill a maniacal dictator who kills his own people and makes war on oth
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Libertarians also hold the completely rational belief that people incapable or unwilling to work hard enough--and here only the Libertarian is allowed to define how hard--should die when they meet hardship.
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And I say that is irrational that people should die just because they are incapable. Take myself for instance. I have had two open heart surgeries (2,7) and and a spine surgery(11). The first heart surgery was when I was two. I was unfortunately intelligent enough at a young enough age (without proper guidance) to wrestle with the idea of should I have been allowed to even exist. Being that I was worth 2 million before my third birthday and my parents couldn't afford the costs, (at least that was what I was
Re:laughable (Score:4, Interesting)
It is fundamentally contradictory to be both an evolutionist AND a libertarian.
Darwin's most cited source, the research on which he built his own research was the theory of Maltus. . Maltus showed that the human population grows exponentially, while resources like food grow linearly. Darwin expanded this to all species, and stated this as the source of scarcity, which creates competition - without which, evolution cannot happen.
But Maltus implies that poverty is almost NEVER the result of "laziness", "providence" or the influence of a deity. Poverty happens because human population grows faster than our food supply (and other resources). This can change now - we have technology that didn't exist in Maltus' time, birth control. However it's an easily checkable fact that family planning only happens above a certain education threshold even now.
So free education is a form of enlightened self-interest. More educated people means less people struggling for resources that will never be enough.
In the meantime though - the simple fact is, poor people are poor because the maths don't work, and the vast majority of them can never be anything else. We HAVE to take care of each other, and accept that the poverty around us deserves pity, as most of the people suffering it, truly have no other option.
That is the core result of Maltus' theory - and if you reject Maltus, you cannot hold Darwin as the one is an extension of the other.
The claim that "any government powerful enough to give you what you want, is powerful enough to take everything away" begs the question (in the proper sense of the phrase). It assumes that the state, and legislature and power-holding government must always be the same entity. Why ? Those branches of government that provide services should be maximally enlarged. Those that wield power, kept as small as possible.
And you worry about having to pay some taxes ? In Brazil, tax rate is a flat 20%. And you get 100% of it back at the end of the year. The government takes the money, invests it, and spends next years budget out of the earnings - you get all your taxes back, the only loss is a bit of earnings and inflation. Since there is no way you alone could have earned on your taxes, what can be earned by the combined taxes of everyone - this is the most efficient allocation of the resource.
With that, the government can afford, among other things, to provide free medical care to all. And I've been in their hospitals, the state medical in Brazil is of HIGHER quality than the private medical care in South Africa. Preventative care like oxygen tank time for people with a viral infection is standard practice, not something that only happens if you're rich enough to pay for it (and your insurance company doesn't weasel out of their obligations).
All this, for effectively, ZERO tax. Sure, it's 20% monthly, but it's zero yearly.
Maltus doesn't mean it's impossible to relieve poverty, it means we cannot blame it on the poor - if poverty is caused by lack of resources, then the answer is to allocate resources more efficiently, which opens up the door to a loophole in Maltus' theory. It assumes the terminal stupidity of our species. Getting more people educated, can reduce stupidity (specifically in family planning) and change the maths.
Re:laughable (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:laughable (Score:4, Insightful)
I fail to see what is so evil about socialist/communist ideas. They don't work in practice but that doesn't make them evil.
Taking the fruits of your neighbors labor to supply for yourself would be called stealing if it was done directly and without the government as a middle man.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking the fruits of your neighbors labor to supply for yourself would be called stealing if it was done directly and without the government as a middle man.
Huh? My bosses do that every day.
Re:laughable (Score:4, Insightful)
Presumably they pay you with all the fruit. Paying isn't labor.
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At a significant mark-down. I used to be billed at $200 an hour for our clients, but saw about $50 of that. This is obviously an extreme case and ignores things like marketing, R&D and a huge support network, but a similar case happens even in small businesses, where I do everything - from R&D to marketing to support to sales to support to business development... you get the idea.
Yes, there's the obvious answer that I could venture out for myself, and take all the cash for myself. The problem is tha
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Yes, there's the obvious answer that I could venture out for myself, and take all the cash for myself. The problem is that this is a) inefficient, and b) not my temperament.
Whose fault is that?
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Essentially you were paying your boss $150 to find you work to do.
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$50 for $200 is not extreme at all. Even after $100 of overhead at the client's firm, you still extract 1/6 of the value. That's much more than most Wall St traders.
People forget that capitalism is basically the people with capital (i.e. money) extracting all the profits because capital is scarce compared to labor. This hasn't been true for the last 30 years: capital is so damn cheap now that you can build a FedEx or a Google or a Microsoft fresh out of college. Now it's all about "intellectual capital
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
But I guess that when socialism is only shown as welfare, it is easy to assume that socialism is stealing.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Funny)
Funny how every one of those things you listed with the exception of the military can be done cheaper and more effectively by the private sector.
DOT = employees getting paid above market wages to hold up "stop/slow" signs.
City water utility = Meter readers getting paid above market wages to drive a car and punch numbers into a PDA
FDA = Yeah, that's worked out real well [fda.gov]. I trust the UL much more than I trust the FDA. I've yet to have a UL approved appliance burn my house down. I have had FDA approved food put me in the hospital.
The internet, yeah it was partially developed by DOD and then properly turned over to the private sector when the commercial uses become apparent. You think we would have seen the rush of online innovation if the government was still in charge?
Yes, because history has taught us time and again that when left to their own accords, the private industry can police itself.
Re:laughable (Score:4, Insightful)
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Companies are concerned with the bottom line. They care NOTHING about the welfare of citizens, whereas the government presumably should. Therefore, things that are of public interest, such as safety (military, FDA), and basic needs (water, power, sewage) SHOULD be controlled by the government, and *are* in a normally functioning society. Because if you privatize these things, safety and basic human needs will ultimately begin to suffer through companies trying t
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm so tired of hearing this. Please, please, please: man up and point out to me a stable first-world country that is doing things as you think they should be done. Where has a lack of central regulation yielded anything other than subsistence farming and warlords? Where has a modern national infrastructure been built without government intervention? Where has the vast majority of the populous been made literate without public schools? Where has crime and poverty been kept to minimal levels without any government social programs?
As far as I know, it hasn't happened. Your ideals are based on a pipe dream just as foolish as communism: that left to their own devices the free market will get people to willingly build the cathedral of society we all take for granted today. If you have an example of this, please point it out and I'll modify my views. If you can't find an example, will you modify yours?
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the DOT were run by a private company, all roads would be tolled....heavily. You would have to pay lots of extra fees like "exit ramp usage fees". If you wanted to go to another state, you'd have to purchase a "subscription" to use those roads. You'd only be allowed to drive certain kinds of cars on those roads....those from car companies that have made cross-licensing agreements with the road companies (and those cars would cost quite a bit more then too). Safety concerns would take a back seat to profits (i.e. unsafe conditions would only be fixed if the costs of lawsuits outweigh the costs of repairs). And you can totally forget about aesthetics....cheap and ugly is what all your roads would look like. etc....etc...
So sure, from a pure efficiency standpoint, the private sector can do things more effectively and efficiently than government. But in the end, consumers still end up paying more from services provided by the private sector. The only time this isn't true is when prices are strictly controlled by government (e.g. here in North Carolina, electric rate hikes must be approved by the state). But then that's considered governmental interference in the marketplace, right?
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no "contract of employment". They pay you what they want to pay you and get rid of you at will.
The only contracts involved are the ones that say you can't work for a competitor or use the knowledge you gained on the job to get a better one.
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Even if you don't get formal training, the company still has to suffer for those first few weeks when you're not acquainted with the system and are thus not as productive as a full employee.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking the fruits of your neighbors labor to supply for yourself would be called stealing if it was done directly and without the government as a middle man.
But if your neighbors are taking the fruits of their neighbors' labor to supply themselves, then the whole system becomes fair again. Sure you have to work out a system of apportioning work allotments so that one person is not being ask to provide a disproportionate of labor, but that is up to the society to figure out.
Each society might have different ideas of what constitutes work. A hippie commune might deem poetry to be a valid and valued product, whereas some other collective might only rank something that contributes materially to the society. This determination could be done democratically. Democracy and communism are not mutually exclusive.
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Communism and freedom/self-determination are mutually exclusive.
Why? In my post I envisioned a society where people did use a democratic process to determine how their society was run while still retaining a system of communism. Rather than just make an assertion that this is wrong, back up your ideas.
Communism can be used as a system of government by an oppressive regime. That doesn't mean that it can only be used by an oppressive regime.
I think that the problem we have when discussing this sort of thing is that we are conditioned to think in terms of "what's in it for
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking someone else's car in exchange for little pieces of green paper would be called stealing if it wasn't backed by the government.
I agree with the grandparent, here: socialism and communism are not inherently evil ideas, any more than capitalism and federalism.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
Taking someone else's car in exchange for little pieces of green paper would be called stealing if it wasn't backed by the government.
No, because nobody put a rhetorical gun to the sellers head and told him to sell the car or go to jail.
Re:laughable (Score:4, Interesting)
How about the first guy sells his food for money to the second guy, then uses that placeholder of equal value to purchase whatever it is he needs from guy three.
In essence, from guy one according to his ability, to guy two according to his need, then from guy three according to their ability and back to guy one according to his need.
My god! Capitalism is Communism!
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I opposed the bailouts. We should have let every one of those outfits fail. Socializing failure is never in the national interest.
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When you find that outside of the ant colony or Borg collective let me know.
I never said it was realistic. I'm simply explaining the concept. It's kinda like pure capitalism. A nice idea in theory, but in practice, completely absurd, based upon a foundation of human behaviour that's so idealized it's silly.
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Well capitalism doesn't work in practice either. If your definition of "in practice" is complete and total adherence to a particular ideology. If you mean are their modified versions of ideological capitalism, socialism, and communism working in the world, I'd have to say yes. And all are working quite well. The top ten economies actually only include one capitalist state. So if anything it's capitalism that doesn't work.
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The hidden communist holocaust murdered about 100 million people in less than 100 years. [amazon.com]
Not only does communism not work, but in an effort to make it work they have to murder off the "imperfect" or "those who don't contribute" or "those who are different" or "those who don't worship the state secular religion called communism" because too many people means social programs cost too much. So if they just off the "surplus population" they can hope to make the economics work even if they don't follow logic or r
Re:laughable (Score:5, Informative)
George Orwell was an ardent socialist you ignorant fool. He went to Spain to fight the fascists.
Communism did none of those things, totalitarian states did. Do you blame capitalism for the death squads the Shah of Iran used after the CIA put him back in power?
Would you like diet education? because it looks like that is what you got.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF?
Are you 12?
All civil society will have some amount of decisions and freedom removed from the individual. We give up that freedom to have a civilization. More or less of that is not evil, it is just a choice.
Also socialism and communism are not interchangeable.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
I've always found it deeply ironic that many "mine mine mine!" capitalists also declare themselves to be Christians and fail to understand sharing one's wealth in the Christian sense at all.
"If you have two coats and your neighbour has none, give one of them away to him."
Give, not sell, because you have more than you need, and he has nothing. Whether you earned it or not is irrelevant.
Re:laughable (Score:4, Insightful)
"And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also." (Matt 6:40)
"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil." (Luke 6:35)
"And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea though he be a stranger, or a sojourner, that he may live with thee." (Lev. 25:35)
None of that precludes punishment for success, but it does lay the boundaries for what and how success can be attained, as well as how you view success and treat your fellow man once you are successful. (Rich young ruler, etc... good parables.)
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There are MANY small-scale communist groups that work very well and have been doing so for decades without problem.
And as long as they don't shoot you for trying to leave, there's not a thing in the world wrong with that.
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There are MANY small-scale communist groups that work very well and have been doing so for decades without problem.
And as long as they don't shoot you for trying to leave, there's not a thing in the world wrong with that.
Excellent point, socialism and freedom are in no way contradictory.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole idea is flawed. The reason that Communism fails on a large scale is that given enough people, someone will be selfish enough to game the system for his own advantage, and refuse to play nice. To avoid this, careful group membership selection, or harsh enforcement are required.
Re:laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
At which point all those "someone [who] will be selfish enough to game the system for his own advantage" will gravitate to positions where they are the ones doing the selection and/or harsh enforcement.
Which is what happened in all so called communist countries.
More in general, communism (the utopia where everybody is equal and has the same) is a metastable [wikipedia.org] state: even if a completely equal society was magically created in an instant, sooner or later, somebody smarter/sneakier would outsmart/deceive somebody which was less so and end up with more and the other with less. Said person, seeing his/her own success and the benefits of that action would do it again, while other smart/sneaky people also seeing it would copy it. Eventually the whole thing society would move to a state where some have more and some have less.
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You think wrongly.
More than just greed. (Score:4, Insightful)
So is intelligence.
Using intelligence to moderate greed is not the same a communism.
Lassez-faire is not an ultimate truth. If it were, then we would have private police, unregulated tobacco, and the supermarket could sell you anything that looked like meat without any regulations at all. That is a recipe for a crime and public health disaster.
The question is not the removal of all regulations, but understanding when regulations are needed. History is *full* of examples of the evils of unregulated markets. Even Alan Greenspan as backed off from that ideology -- and he was the "wizard", and chief high-priest of that position -- and an extraordinarily intelligent man.
Human beings are more than just selfish greedy individuals. We are capable or more than that -- and that is NOT communism OR socialism.
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And lets all remember Orwell was in fact a socialist. He even went to fight the the fascists in the spanish civil war.
Re:laughable (Score:4, Insightful)
Note that access to information, education and entertainment, relationships, friendships and intimacy and many other basic human needs are not on that list. Travel, personal property, reproduction, and many other norms we accept as given are also not on that list. What I wrote was that basic human needs for safety and survival would be afforded as a right to all people in a "fair" and idealized world, and that people could work for a life more than that.
I stand by that assertion: such a place would be fair. Would it work? Who knows. European countries offer a reasonable safety net and seem to be doing OK. Compared to some countries, crime there is lower, people are smarter, incarceration is lower, people are happier and healthier, drug use is lower. An idealized world like this probably wouldn't be nearly as free as some people experience today, but it would be fair. Personally, I'd choose freedom over fairness when they conflict, but offering a real safety net for human survival and safety would eliminate the fear that drives many toward the ills we see in the world today, and it would make the world a much nicer place.
If you want to label it a "socialist utopia", fine, call it hoogamazoola for all I care, it doesn't change the essence of the point: life now, on earth, is not even close to fair in any sense, nor do people even give the idea of "fair" a reasonable hearing in social discourse. Marx was right about one thing in the mid 1800's: his premise was there is enough. It was true then, and still is today.
Re:laughable (Score:4, Insightful)
WTF, somebody actually modded this idiot coward insightful?
Socialism isn't that far off from Capitalism and it requires that people work, the biggest difference is in the compensation the workers are given for their labor. Socialism isn't necessary in a Capitalist society as long as the workers are compensated enough to meet their needs and be satisfied with their standard of living. When basic needs can't be met but are financially viable based on the economy their labor drives then you will see moves towards Socialism.
Its fine to disagree about what works and what doesn't but marking the village idiot as insightful because it makes you feel good doesn't make it insightful. It just means you've joined into the circle jerk.
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As opposed to the capitalist moral morass, where "fair" is whatever you pay for.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessing. The inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
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I know you were trying to be cute but my change actually didn't effect the meaning of what you were saying at all. At least be honest.
In socialism you have a guarantee of a certain level of blessing. In exchange you can't achieve dizzying heights of wealth, less chance of being a bazzillionaire.
In pure capitalism you have NO guarantee of blessings. But you have a chanc
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And I (age 52) and you were both 'forced' to allow the government to draw out from that retirement system, and leave it full of IOUs, or there would be a lot more money in it, enough so you would probably see it as well. Hell, enough your hypothetical grandkids probably would. I'm not even sure it will last until I reach 68. But you and I are not what's imposing on each other's freedom. You can resent being 'forced' to provide for me if you want to fall for that line. Maybe I should resent the 13 years I pu
developed these technologies over 15 years ago... (Score:4, Informative)
LoB
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And if they published this information before they filed the patent then it's now in public domain anyways. LoB
I believe in the US you are allowed to file one year after you publish. In Europe I believe this is not the case
Re:developed these technologies over 15 years ago. (Score:3, Informative)
then the 17 years of protection by the patents is pretty much over.
Don't worry. They've taken that into account and will now only pretty much sue the pants off those companies.
And if they published this information before they filed the patent then it's now in public domain anyways.
In some jurisdictions. From BitLaw [bitlaw.com]:
One of the most important lessons to learn from this requirement is that there is a one year period after the first pbulic [sic] dislcosure or offer for sale of an invention during which a patent application must be filed. [...] Although the United States grants the one year grace period described in the last two rules above, most other countries do not grant such a period.
Re:developed these technologies over 15 years ago. (Score:5, Informative)
The earlier patent gets 17 years from the date of issue, which was in 1998 (so it expires in 2015 as long as they pay their maintenance fees), because it was filed before June 8, 1995 and gets the longer of 17 years from issue or 20 years from filing.
Ironically, the later-filed patent gets 20 years from the earliest date of filing, i.e., the date at which the earlier-filed application was filed (because the later-filed patent is a continuation of a continuation of the earlier-filed patent), which means it expires in 2014.
Of course, the later-filed patent has a patent term adjustment of about four years, so it actually expires in 2018.
I hope this clears things up for you. ;)
Re:developed these technologies over 15 years ago. (Score:5, Insightful)
As always, I don't represent you and this post is not legal advice, and does not represent the views or opinions of my firm, or its partners, yadda yadda.
Re:developed these technologies over 15 years ago. (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, I'm betting that before Microsoft payed half a billion dollars to settle the suit, they probably scoured the world for invalidating prior art.
Established companies knowingly pay huge amounts on dubious claims just to raise the barrier to entry of their turf. In the long run 0.5 bill is not a big sum for Microsoft. Further there are likely to be silent undisclosed deals specifying that a huge portion of the pay out should be used exclusively to enforce the widest claims of the patent on all violations fingered by Microsoft. There is a precedent for that.
A bunch of automobile manufacturers voluntarily recognized a dubious patent, bought the patent and used it to shut down competition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Licensed_Automobile_Manufacturers [wikipedia.org]
Re:developed these technologies over 15 years ago. (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.w3.org/2003/10/27-rogan.html [w3.org]
No need for scouring, Tim Berners-Lee already did it.
More power to 'em (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More power to 'em (Score:4, Insightful)
That would set a very bad precedent.
Now as to this case, I have no idea if it's a load of b.s. since I can't seem to get the article to load.
Maybe it got slashdotted.
Personally, I'm sick of the software patent scams, just slap them back to copyrights like it used to be.
As long as we're wishing for things, eliminate business patents also.
Re:More power to 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the defendants are also ridiculously litigious about software patents,
Every case like this that is lost by the defendants serves to further legitimize this type of patent. If they win this, any project using Ajax is at risk, including many popular FOSS forum and CMS packages. So you'll pardon me if I'm less than enthusiastic about this, regardless of who is defending.
Re:More power to 'em (Score:5, Insightful)
The use of asynchronous communication with the server is one of the sub-claims. The actual "invention" that they filed is a browser that can download programs, and run them in such a way that the program can communicate with the browser for I/O. That is AJAX, but also Javascript in general. It's also any Java applet, Flash applet or in fact, any applet of any kind.
They claim that they have invented the idea of executable applets, in any language or implementation. And after the Microsoft victory their legal position looks quite strong. I would assume that the only way the targets in this round can beat this is by tying the suits together and trying to get the patents dismissed on the grounds that they are overly broad.
There was no specific invention in the patent - but they stumbled onto a very general idea that is the basis for the entire internet 15 years later. The argument needs to be along the lines that no one company should be allowed to own a patent on technology that it actually took the entire industry 15 years to develop.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Adobe, Amazon.com, Apple, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, JPMorgan, and Playboy are all probably really saddened by the fact that they didn't come up with this themselves quicker.
I'm not going to stand by and let you insult Playboy by lumping them in with the likes of Adobe, Apple and JPMorgan ;)
Re:More power to 'em (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are confused, this means that Canadians are not allowed to be awarded software patents (good), but still need to abide by software patents awarded to Americans and Europeans or be SUED (very bad).
If you are STILL confused, welcome to the club
Sadly they didn't sue Slashdot... (Score:4, Funny)
Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
'We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources.
Bullshit
Show me the web site that you made providing an interactive web app back in 1994, only one year after the web was even invented.
Don't have one? No one did? Thought as much...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Last I checked, the browser technology (specifically Javascript) available now wasn't even conseived in 1944."
Not as such, but Vannevar Bush [theatlantic.com] was getting close. Does microfilm count as prior art?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sadly, no. An actual working prototype is not needed to file for a patent. All you really need (I'm no patent lawyer) is a fairly detailed description of an idea. You also need to search for any ideas similar to yours. If applicable you may need to reference them as works.
I believe the only way this can be overturned is if there is evidence of prior art - (possibly) a working implementation of the idea before the patent was filed.
Also, it's not any particular implementation that they are going after, it is
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
You realize almost every new concept exists as technology showcases before they make there appearance in the general public right?
Ok, I can understand why you didn't read the article, and why you didn't read the summary, but how did you manage to read the end of my post and not see the beginning?
I'll requote for you adding the important bits:
'We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources.
Please insert $0.25 to play again!
Yes Probably Bullshit (Prior Art)? (Score:5, Informative)
Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Partially correct. That is one point where prior art is useful. This situation is another. If someone sues you for patent violations and you can find clear prior art, then you can attempt a flanking maneuver: file suit to have the patent invalidated. If you can invalidate the patent through prior art, you don't even have to fight the frontal battle of proving that you aren't violating the patent.
Cached (Score:3, Informative)
by Google http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=&btnG=Search&q=cache:http://imvivo.com/DetailsView/tabid/104/IndexID/1779944/Default.aspx [google.com]
Already reported (Score:3, Interesting)
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/10/06/2055214/Eolas-To-Sue-Apple-Google-and-21-Others?from=rss [slashdot.org]
What I wonder is, we've had little information since. Reactions from the companies involved in the suit? I only heard that GoDaddy released a statement "We're not guilty and we'll defend ourselves vigorously". The other companies have withheld comment.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I expect that the other companies will not say anything in public that would jeopardise their ability to make a behind-closed-doors accommodation with the litigating party, or with each other to cooperatively fight. Saying "we're not guilty and we'll see you in court" out loud is as good as saying "the other party is full of sh*t" and could possibly taint settlement possibilities (?).
I suppose you're correct. It made an impression to me that GoDaddy as a small company simply had less well thought-out respon
I made a webapp with a tcl/tk browser add-on in 93 (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of months after Mosaic browser was publicised.
Does that count?
It used a tcl/tk app to draw vector topographic maps. The tcl/tk app
commanded the mosaic browser to fetch data for the map, and to
display accompanying text info in its browser window, changing the
text depending on clicks in different locations on the map.
It seemed f'ing obvious at the time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who knows, maybe the judges in these cases will see the lig
Or an animated GIF? (Score:3, Insightful)
They were on an island without internet... (Score:4, Insightful)
You snooze, you lose (Score:5, Informative)
There is a legal term for this... Oh yes, negligence.
There's a better word: laches [wikipedia.org]. It's the word that a lot of Slashdot posers who think they know the difference between a copyright and a trademark forget about. Laches is an equitable estoppel for a plaintiff's delay in bringing legal action where such delay harms the defendant.
Justice, but old dogs rarely learn new tricks (Score:3, Interesting)
While I'm partly satisfied that each of these companies is now paying for their short-sighted support of software patents, any legitimacy to software patents is bad for the industry as a whole. Sadly, this example wil most likely lead these companies to shore up their own patent defenses rather than realize the error of their ways.
Suing Apple? Really? Ever hear of HyperCard? (Score:5, Informative)
You know, HyperCard? The program that in 1986 allowed you to "embed external content in a hypermedia document". Eight years before you filed this patent.
In the late 80's did a photo/video search interface in HyperCard that pulled visual content from an external database program (4D), as well as interacting with a full-text index apllication over a network running on a PC.
Hear's to hoping that Apple spanks them by filing for a re-examination of their patent.
Anyone remember Netscape LiveConnect? (Score:3, Informative)
I made a webapp in early 2001 that used both AJAX (with a hidden frame for client-server communication, rather than an XHR) and a Java applet. It was used to create presentations from within a web browser. The Java applet was used for laying out a presentation slide, providing the user with the capability to create/position elements of the presentation (text, images, and so forth). The app was operational more than a year before the filing date of US7599985.
The application made use of Netscape's LiveConnect (an old Java/JavaScript communication API) to do this. LiveConnect was introduced in 1997, with Netscape 4. As far as I can see, LiveConnect was designed to enable what this patent claims to invent.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiveConnect [wikipedia.org] and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Navigator [wikipedia.org]
AJAX is just fancy client / server (Score:3, Insightful)
AJAX is just client server fancied up a little bit. There's no real difference architecturally between a 1985 FoxPro application and a 2008 AJAX application, except that the AJAX application will be slower but scale to a million users and have prettier fonts and worse reporting.
15 years (Score:5, Insightful)
>>> We developed these technologies over 15 years ago .... Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair... All we want is what's fair.'"
15 years is too long for a software patent to last. Eolas had more than enough opportunity in that time to capitalise and recover R&D costs on any software technology by making a real product. Eolas didn't ever do anything using this technology so is provably just patent trolling.
Whats fair is that the patent office should remove patent rights from owners not actively developing or marketing provably available products within a certain time period, otherwise they're just allowing troll companies to hold the whole tech world back from developing.
This is a lot broader than AJAX... (Score:4, Interesting)
Patent US5838906 [boliven.com]
Abstract:
In other words, the patent is on the entire concept of embedding objects in a browser. I think this illustrates perfectly some of the faults of software patents: 1) It is a concept for an invention, not an actual invention; 2) It is a re-statement of general practices and patterns (remote procedure call; client/server; interactive user interface) that only looks new because it is being re-applied to another technology (browsers, in this case); 3) It is over-broad in scope, covering not a particular invention but an entire class of inventions; 4) It is general in execution, not requiring any specific device or implementation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You should sue east texas as a co-conspirator in your patentented patent trolling violation. After all, without their help, trolling wouldn't be as profitable.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)