Texas Jury Strikes Down Man's Claim to Own the Interactive Web 151
ackthpt writes "Sir Tim Berners-Lee traveled to a courtroom in East Texas to give his testimony on how, if upheld, the Eolas Technologies & University of California patent on Web Interactivity could prove to be a major threat to the Internet as it's known today. The Jury deliberated only a few hours before invalidating the patent in question. In a victory Tweet Berners-Lee said, 'Texas jury agreed Eolas 906 patent invalid. Good thing too!' Google, Amazon, Apple, Adobe and a host of other companies, with representatives present, must have given a Texas-size sigh of relief."
Common Sense Rules (Score:5, Interesting)
I was originally going to submit the story yesterday with the comment "how could they consider this patentable? We had windows with full 3D manipulation going on prior to 1991. We ran Patran via X11 and to the layman that would appear as a "super" browser window. It covered all aspects of any interactive patent by having full 2-way communication, visualization, and interaction. The only thing it didn't do was run over HTTP."
But it looks like common sense ruled and the jury did the right thing for once, even in Tyler.
A major threat to the internet - In The USA (Score:4, Interesting)
Since US patents have no validity outside US borders the rest of the world would have just collectively rolled its eyes yet again at daft US patents and moved on if he had have won.
Relevance (Score:4, Interesting)
That's very nice, but is it actually relevant to the case? I'd have thought the case would be decided on its own merits, rather that the consequences.
Re:What? East Texas Jury? (Score:4, Interesting)
I was actually kinda hoping Eolas would win, and start demanding insanely high license fees, effectively shutting down the internet, at least in the USA. Then maybe the rest of the world would finally turn their backs on us until we fix our broken IP laws.