Eolas wants Microsoft to stop browser distribution

ZDNet-UK ^ | October 09, 2003, 09:00 BST | Paul Festa

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Is anybody out there in Washington starting to realize that copyrights and patents are just a thinly-disguised mechanism for a few cartels of lawyers to own everything, and that if this is allowed to continue the advancement of technology will be completely thwarted, except in China where they pay no attention to such nonsense anyway?

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[NotQuiteCricket]

umn. Probably not. Patents are important. I'm just not sure about patents for software, or business processes. A patent on a thing and the way that thing works I can get behind, but software? Hum. Why can't I patent a plot line then? (ignoring prior art)

[MineralMan]

"Web developers face the possibility of having to significantly rewrite their pages or strip them of commonly used technologies like Macromedia's Flash."

Easy for me. I don't use anything but pure HTML on my pages. You can view my site using any version of any browser. I wouldn't have it any other way.

[WHBates]

Just try to even getting within a thousand miles of and MSFT patent and see what happens to you. What goes around comes around.

[MineralMan]

Wrong Headline. It should read:

Eolas Wants Microsoft to Buy Them

Silliness.

[q_an_a]

very well said. and the uc system could use 100 million too.

[webstersII]

"Is anybody out there in Washington starting to realize that copyrights and patents are just a thinly-disguised mechanism for a few cartels of lawyers to own everything, and that if this is allowed to continue the advancement of technology will be completely thwarted, except in China where they pay no attention to such nonsense anyway?"

The Founding Fathers didn't think so.

Of course the whole issue has gotten out of hand with the dramatic extensions of the time lengths for copyright but the original idea still has merit.

[Saturnalia]

Yes, but what about the REST of Rohan?

/nerd

[webstersII]

"Easy for me. I don't use anything but pure HTML on my pages. You can view my site using any version of any browser. I wouldn't have it any other way."

Sounds wonderful but that doesn't work for every application.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The Founding Fathers didn't think so.

Technology has come a long, long, long, long, LONG way since then.

If you disagree with that statement, then we have nothing further to talk about because I have learned it is a waste of time to discuss anything with dishonest people.

Human nature has not changed much, but technology now pervades everything we do.

Maybe innovation needed to be protected from competition in the days of the founding fathers, and maybe it didn't. Maybe "intellectual property" laws were just another obstacle that the American spirit overcame.

It is now possible to patent mathematical algorithms.

How far do you think the world would have progressed if Pythagoras had been able to patent his Theorem and collect royalties in perpetuity anytime geometry was used to solve an engineering problem?

The paperwork alone would have ground everything to a halt, much as keeping track of Microsoft licenses is a nightmare in a company with a few thousand PCs.

The ability to dispense with the expensive process of tracking licenses is going to move a lot of companies to open source in the next few years. It's already happening.

The people you would like to enslave with IP laws will find a way around them whether you like it or not. It's a derivative of one of the basic laws of thermodynamics.

[Grut]

A patent on a thing and the way that thing works I can get behind, but software?

A program is a machine, just one that works only in the particular environment of a computer... like a boat works on water and nowhere else.

[jrawk]

The problem here is this is a technology that has existed and been used in practice for over 5 years now, since 1997 or even earlier.

Now after the fact this one man company applies for and gets the patent for what? Not a single line of his code is being used, never did he create or could he have imagined the uses for.

How does it affect you? Well this little re-tooling will approach the number of lines of code needed to fix y2k. All for this mans claim he owns a programmatic "concept."

He may have one the patent, he may have won the lawsuit based on that. But if he ever get's a red cent in licensing it will encourage copy cats that will paralyze the digital age.

-- lates
-- jrawk

[HAL9000]

Lueck said Eolas would still permit Microsoft to distribute IE as is, as long as it's being used in conjunction with an application provider or a corporate intranet that has an Eolas plug-in licence.

Corporate intranet users don't need to buy a license. Microsoft has agreed to pay the full legal bills of all their customers. Just keep using the old Internet Explorer and send the bill to Microsoft.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Eolas wants Microsoft to stop browser distribution

Awww...he's just a little guy. Microsoft shouldn't worry about him.

[The Electrician]

How far do you think the world would have progressed if Pythagoras had been able to patent his Theorem and collect royalties in perpetuity anytime geometry was used to solve an engineering problem?

That's a rather poor example, because patents are not and never have been issued in perpetuity (at least not in the US - I can't speak for ancient Greece).

The whole rationale behind granting of patents is that there is an explicitly-stated trade, which is intended to benefit both parties, the inventor(s) and the public - the "founders" clearly understood that, and the passage of time has not invalidated that understanding. The inventor gets an exclusive, for a limited period of time, during which time he can prevent others from using the patented material. In return for that, the inventor must fully disclose the invention to the public. So, after a period of time goes by, the invention is in the public domain. That's very different from locking something up in perpetuity.

Copyright is quite a bit longer, but copyright laws are entirely different from patent laws.

My objection to the Eolas patent is that it was wrongly granted - there is prior art which should have invalidated it and prevented it from issuing in the first place. I suspect that another round or two in court will settle things. I also suspect that Eolas believes that to be the case as well, and so they are going to try very hard to milk it for hundreds of millions of dollars as soon as possible, in the hopes that they can grab a windfall before their patent is invalidated and it becomes worthless. Not all that different from the "take the money and run" philosophy behind the SCO-Linux dustup. IMHO it's only a matter of time before both of them get their comeuppance.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

That's a rather poor example, because patents are not and never have been issued in perpetuity...

Copyright has been extended over twenty times, the last time so Mickey Mouse would not go into the public domain.

The same thing is going to happen to patents.

There is no difference between eternal copyright/patent and extending the term every time one is about to expire.

When you have the Patent Office granting patents on double clicking an icon to make a purchase, the abuse has reached an apex and it is time for the party to be over.

[supercat]

The problem here is this is a technology that has existed and been used in practice for over 5 years now, since 1997 or even earlier.

What exactly is being claimed? The concept of having code resources (separate from the application) manage an area within a window goes back to the original Macintosh which debuted in 1984. I don't know when Macintosh applications first made use of this ability, but certainly ResEdit plug-ins did so; all the necessary hooks existed from System 1.0. To be sure, some of these hooks made an excellent breeding ground for viruses and consequently anti-virus software had to limit some of the cool things that could otherwise be done, but those abilities go way back.

Can anyone explain what exactly Eolas is claiming they did which hadn't been done before?

[The Electrician]

When you have the Patent Office granting patents on double clicking an icon to make a purchase, the abuse has reached an apex and it is time for the party to be over.

That's just throwing out the baby with the bath water, to repeat a timeworn cliche. The answer is to reform the system, not to destroy it.