Posted on 08/23/2002 5:26:48 PM PDT by HAL9000
NEW YORK, Aug 23 (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Thursday rejected a claim by Britain's BT Group to have invented the basic means for navigating the Internet, in a case considered a test of who owns the basic Internet technology.BT Group, the former U.K. telecommunications monopoly known as British Telecom, had sued Prodigy Communications, a pioneering U.S. Internet service provider, demanding that Prodigy pay BT royalties for using hyperlink technology.
In a decision issued late on Thursday, Judge Colleen McMahon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York denied BT Group's claim that Prodigy's use of hyperlinks infringed on technology developed some 25 yearsago.
BT was eventually awarded the so-called Sargent patents in the late 1980s for a method of electronic navigation that resembled the way in which hyperlinks allow Internet users to surf from one Web site to another. But the new court ruling rejected BT claims that such patents amounted to hyperlinking.
"In contrast to what BT would have us believe, there are no disputed issues of material fact in this case," McMahon wrote in a decision in which she granted summary judgment to Prodigy on its request to have the case dropped.
"I find that, as a matter of law, no jury could find that Prodigy infringes the Sargent patent," the judge ruled.
Michael Wadley, a spokesman for BT Group in London, said that the company was studying the judge's ruling and mulling how to respond. "We're disappointed," Wadley said. "But we're considering our options."
Wadley declined to comment on whether BT would appeal the decision.
CASHING IN ON PATENTS
In a bid to capitalize on a long legacy of communications research, BT Group in recent years had targeted nearly 20 U.S. Internet service providers demanding they pay royalties on technology developed in the 1970s for interactive television.
BT had called the U.S. case a test of whether it could commercialize a potentially lucrative patent. If successful, BT had planned to go after other U.S. Internet service providers, in the sole country still governed by the BT patent.
Prodigy, which got its start in 1984, is the oldest consumer online access service. In the early 1990s, Prodigy became the first mainstream U.S. company to offer consumer Internet access. The company is now a unit of SBC Communications, the second largest U.S. local phone service.
A spokesman for SBC said the company hoped the decision would put to rest BT's effort to dredge up old patent claims.
"We are pleased with the judge's decision. She has validated our position that these claims were without merit," said Larry Meyer, a spokesman for SBC and its Prodigy unit. "We trust that this will put to rest these frivolous claims."
Since the controversial lawsuit became public in late 2000, BT has come under heavy fire from computer programmers, developers and Web business executives, a group that has traditionally attacked technology patents of any kind.
Public critics of BT say the notion of hypertext linking was devised decades before BT developed its own version in the 1970s, for which it was issued the US patent in 1989.
In a unique display of solidarity, the Internet and legal communities have used Web message boards over the past year to ferret out claims that "prior art" for hypertext links exists.
Most cite British scientist Ted Nelson, who ostensibly coined the word "hypertext" in 1963, using the term in his book "Literary Machine" in 1965.
On Friday, shares of BT Group ended unchanged at 214 pence on the London Stock Exchange. Shares of SBC gave up 3.5 percent, falling 96 cents, to $26.42 in mid-afternoon trading on New York Stock Exchange.
I'm pretty sure Ted Nelson is an American, not British.
That's not right. Speaking as a programmer (also known as a developer), patents are a fine thing. Software patents are almost always stupid, however.
Anyone remember when Lotus (I think) tried to patent the "look and feel" of a spreadsheet?
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