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p align="left">Subdomain Patent Sparks Concerns By Dennis McCafferty March 26, 2004 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- In astonished postings to Web hosting discussion forums last week, several hosting providers announced that they had received letters from a party representing Stateline, Nevada-based Ideaflood Inc. (ideaflood.com). The letter stated that Ideaflood has patented the idea of assigning users subdomains, such as AutomotiveWidgets.hostingcompany.com. According to the discussion postings, the letter said that, since Ideaflood has patented the concept, further subdomain service for customers would require the purchase of a license through Ideaflood. "We have utilized this idea for years," wrote the letter...

NYTimes.com > Technology Dustin Satloff, a 10-year-old from Manhattan, with the baseball card collection that inspired him to invent a fantasy game. He recently received a patent for it. Not Too Young for a Patent By TERESA RIORDAN Published: February 16, 2004 LAST week, Dustin Satloff, a fifth grader at the Collegiate School in Manhattan, received his first patent at the age of 10. It was for a new way to play fantasy baseball with special trading cards. While it might seem unusual for a child to obtain a patent, it is not. About half of the 70 young people...

<p>Technically, Stephen Thaler has written more music than any composer in the world. He also invented the Oral-B CrossAction toothbrush and devices that search the Internet for messages from terrorists. He has discovered substances harder than diamonds, coined 1.5 million new English words, and trained robotic cockroaches. Technically.</p>

Microsoft has applied for patents that could prevent competing applications from reading documents created with the latest version of the software giant's Office program. The company filed similar patent applications in New Zealand and the European Union that cover word processing documents stored in the XML (Extensible Markup Language) format. The proposed patent would cover methods for an application other than the original word processor to access data in the document. The U.S. Patent Office had no record of a similar application. Microsoft representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment. XML-based capabilities have been one of the main...

December 11, 2003: Search By Number Gary Price points out that in their quest to become the command line of the Internet, Google has added several new features: you can now enter UPS (1Z1234567891234567) and FedEx (fedex 999999999999), patent (patent 5123123), airplane (n199ua), and FCC equipment (fcc B4Z-34009-PIR) ID/tracking numbers. Fun stuff.

Eolas Technologies, which has the rights to a browser plug-in patent, has filed a motion to permanently stop Microsoft distributing Internet Explorer browsers that infringe the patent Eolas Technologies on Monday filed a motion to permanently enjoin Microsoft's distribution of its Internet Explorer browser amid a flurry of court filings by both sides in the pivotal patent infringement case. Eolas, the sole licensee and sublicensor of a browser plug-in patent owned by the University of California, asked the US District Court in Chicago for an injunction against distributing copies of IE capable of running plug-in applications in a way the...

AN FRANCISCO, Aug. 11 — A federal jury awarded a former University of California researcher $521 million today in a lawsuit against Microsoft that asserted its Explorer Web browser infringed a patent for sending software applications over the Internet. The lawsuit, which was filed in 1999 by Michael Doyle, now a Chicago businessman and founder of Eolas Technologies Inc., and the University of California, had sought $1.2 billion. The plaintiffs asserted that the invention had been crucial in permitting Microsoft to compete against the Netscape Navigator Web browser, now owned by AOL Time Warner Inc. A Microsoft spokesman, Jim Desler,...

Last month, when Microsoft announced its bellwether decision to award employees restricted stock instead of options, it also made news in a federal courtroom—the kind of news you keep quiet about. Microsoft suffered utter defeat at a crucial pretrial hearing in what appears to be the highest-stakes patent litigation ever—one in which a tiny company called InterTrust Technologies claims that 85% of Microsoft's entire product line infringes its digital security patents. (See Can This Man Bring Down Microsoft?) InterTrust's engineers developed and patented what they say are key inventions in two areas: so-called digital-rights management and trusted systems. The technologies...

With little fanfare, a federal judge has issued a critical ruling supporting a patent lawsuit against Microsoft brought by InterTrust, a digital rights management company. In a crucial preliminary hearing aimed essentially at setting the ground rules for the trial itself, Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong ruled strongly in favor of InterTrust Technologies. The company is suing Microsoft on 144 counts of patent infringement, contending that Microsoft products ranging from the Windows operating system to the Xbox game system violate its digital rights management patents. No decision has been made on whether Microsoft actually has infringed on InterTrust's patents. But the...

The owners of the MacCoffee brand have challenged the right of McDonald's Russia to the similar sounding McCafe logo as the former prepares to launch a chain of coffee shops in Moscow. Future Enterprises Singapore claims the fast food giant's trademark sounds confusingly similar to its instant coffee label and has appealed to Russia's trademarks and patents agency, Rospatent. According to Sudip Nair, the head of FES's Moscow office, the appeal points out that his company has held the right to the brand since 1998. FES has sold its instant coffee under the MacCoffee name since 1994. The company also...

Inventors patent ideas to pre-empt their rivals Companies then must buy rights to the devices ...If a company decides to build a product based on his idea, it might have to buy the patent from him, pay him a licensing fee or face him in court. It's part of a legal tactic called "offensive blocking patents" in which businesses or individual entrepreneurs use patents not so much as tools to build new products, but as legal roadblocks or bargaining chips against competitors or corporate giants. Some legal experts, including those representing big corporations, are skeptical of this approach, which...

The European Commission accused the French yesterday of a "lamentable" record in enforcing European Union law and pledged tough action to bring member states to book. Despite being zealous advocates of closer European integration, the French are facing 220 open cases involving systematic violations of EU laws and are guilty of the most flagrant foot-dragging of any EU state when implanting new rules. The long list of violations include a refusal to obey the law on biotech patents, for maintaining an illegal ban on food additives, and using obstructionist measures to prevent lawyers from other EU countries working in France....

GOTTA FREEP THIS - Operation Accountability Please help FReep the Commissioner for Patents and the US Patent and Trademark Office who have not used logic or accountability and have not followed the authority of the US Constitution. There are at least two very important reasons why this important. REASON 1. At the present time, with the United States at war against terror, energy measurement, energy generation, and energy storage -- including alternative methods -- are crucially important to the United States for both its economy and for its security. Meanwhile, the US Patent Office under the Commissioner for Patents Godici...

Remarks by Chairman Alan GreenspanMarket Economies and Rule of LawAt the 2003 Financial Markets Conference of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Sea Island, Georgia (via satellite) April 4, 2003 Market economies require a rule of law. A society without state protection of individual rights, especially the right to own property, would not build private long term assets, a key ingredient of a growing modern economy. Yet an excess of rules--in the extreme case, central planning--has also been shown to stifle initiative and produce economic stagnation. Since its early stirrings in eighteenth century Britain, modern economic development has been...

PanIP claims that if you use graphical and textual information on a video screen for purposes of making a sale, then you are infringing on its patent. Read more on this story here.Patents. They protect us when we come up with a great piece of technology, and allow us to reap the rewards from our hard work and intellectual property. As a creator of intellectual property myself, I thoroughly understand and support the need for patent and copyright laws. Without them, innovation and creativity would be severely stifled.But they can be abused. A company called PanIP holds patents that it...

A Washington court ruling could see SQL Server developers liable for millions of dollars in licensing fees. The judgment concerns a contract dispute between Timeline Inc. and Microsoft, over three patents relating to datamarts. In Microsoft's interpretration of its licence with Timeline, published in a press release in July 1999, "all users of Microsoft SQL Server 7, Office 2000 and other Microsoft products that utilize this type of technology are unencumbered by Timeline's patents." Timeline disagreed. The Washington Court of Appeal judgement plumped for the company. The company reckons that some SQL Server developers could face bills in the...

SBC Wants Your Money How I, Cringely Readers Can Overturn an Unpopular Patent This column is about U.S. patent 5,933,841, which was granted to the old Ameritech phone company in 1999, and is now owned by Ameritech's acquirer,SBC Communications.  It is a patent you will be hearing more about because nearly every modern web page appears to violate it, maybe even this one.  I HATE when that happens! There are no villains in this story.  The patent exists and was applied for on May 17, 1996.  That was very early in the era of the commercial Internet, back when...

Patents a virtue for IBM By John G. SpoonerStaff Writer, CNET News.comJanuary 12, 2003, 9:00 PM PT IBM will announce on Monday that it was the top recipient of U.S. patents in 2002.Big Blue was awarded 3,288 patents during the past year, making it the top recipient among private sector companies for the 10th year in a row, according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Canon ranked second during in 2002 with 1,893 patents. IBM has generated just over 22,000 patents during the last 10 years, but those patents have changed with the times, IBM researchers said. Many of...

Poor countries have little to gain and plenty to lose from adopting Western standards of patent protection, a group of experts appointed by the British government said on Thursday. The Commission on Intellectual Property Rights concluded that a global drive to expand patent protection would mean higher-priced medicines and seeds for most developing countries, with no significant benefit for their local industries. Activists have long campaigned against the blanket adoption of patents in the developing world, arguing it leads to inflated prices for drugs to treat AIDS and other deadly conditions in Africa. Western companies say patents are vital for...

FEATURE STORY | Special Report Big Pharma, Bad Science by Nathan Newman n June, the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most respected medical journals, made a startling announcement. The editors declared that they were dropping their policy stipulating that authors of review articles of medical studies could not have financial ties to drug companies whose medicines were being analyzed. The reason? The journal could no longer find enough independent experts. Drug company gifts and "consulting fees" are so pervasive that in any given field, you cannot find an expert who has not been paid off in some...