MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-09-11 |
| FROM | Mike Richardson - NYLXS PRESIDENT
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] Microsoft bit by patents
|
Why doesn't Micro$oft pay Eolas a licensing fee?
On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, Ruben Safir Secretary NYLXS wrote:
>
> E patent endgame detailed
>
> By Paul Festa Staff Writer, CNET News.com September 11, 2003, 12:22 PM PT
>
> Microsoft has suffered another legal setback in the patent dispute with
> software developer Eolas and is now advising Web authors on workarounds,
> as new details emerge of its plans to tweak Internet Explorer.
>
> A federal judge last week rejected Microsoft's post-trial claim that
> Eolas had misrepresented the facts in the patent case, which claimed the
> software giant had stolen browser technology relating to plug-ins. The
> ruling came after a $521 million verdict against the software giant last
> month, and ends Microsoft's first attempt to challenge the result.
>
> Several more post-trial motions remain to be dispensed, and Microsoft
> doesn't expect a final judgment in this round to be handed down until
> October or November. After that, Microsoft has 30 days to decide whether
> to appeal, which it has pledged to do.
> Still, last week's loss on claims of "inequitable conduct" heightened
> the sense that not only Microsoft but the entire Web may soon be forced
> to make substantial adjustments--and that pages around the Web and on
> private intranets will have to be rewritten to work with an altered IE.
>
> "If you're currently using a plug-in, you will have to change your
> pages quite significantly," said one person familiar with Microsoft's
> post-verdict plans. "There might be tools to help you do so, but
> currently they don't exist."
>
> Regardless of whether the court orders Microsoft to change IE, the
> software giant has been conferring with its own engineers and those of
> companies that rely on the browser's ability to automatically launch
> and display multimedia programs with plug-ins--an ability the court
> held to be, in its current form, an infringement of the Eolas patent.
> Now Microsoft, while expressing optimism that it will ultimately prevail
> over Eolas in the courts, is advising Web authors to take precautions
> and prepare for a post-Eolas world.
>
> "We believe we are going to be successful, but the wrong thing to do is
> to sit back and wait for the legal process to play out," said Michael
> Wallent, a general manager in Microsoft's Windows division who ran
> the IE team for versions 5.5 and 6, and who has been involved in the
> Eolas defense since the suit was filed. "There are technologies that
> are already used today (that aren't covered by the verdict) and all we
> are saying is, given the choice, use the technologies that are already
> available to you."
>
> Those techniques involve using scripting languages and the set of
> technologies marketed as dynamic HTML (DHTML) to launch external
> applications--a commonly available and familiar method that Microsoft
> does not believe infringes on the patent.
>
> Eolas and its lawyers did not return calls seeking comment.
>
> Wallent cited CNN.com as an example of a site that uses Macromedia
> Flash--a technology many consider particularly vulnerable to the patent's
> claims--in a non-infringing way.
>
> While Microsoft dispenses advice and stays mum on details of the
> workarounds it is contemplating for IE, sources who attended the
> company's recent strategy session with the World Wide Web Consortium
> (W3C)--hosted in San Francisco by Macromedia--described various methods
> the company proposed for evading the particulars of the Eolas patent in
> launching applications like Macromedia Flash, Java applets and Adobe's
> Acrobat Reader.
>
> According to these sources, Microsoft said at the meeting that it
> believed a simple dialog box inserted between the selection and the
> launch of a Java applet or an ActiveX control would maneuver IE out of
> the patent's definition of an "automated interactive experience."
>
> Microsoft also is said to have proposed other ways to launch applications
> in a way that could not be held to infringe on the patent, but would
> avoid the ungainly dialog box solution.
>
> One such option would move the data to the Web page itself, rather than
> pulling it from an external source. In Microsoft's view, attendees said,
> the patent only covers a situation in which the Web page called up data
> located elsewhere. The company is said to have told attendees that it
> believes so-called inline data falls outside the Eolas patent claims
> because it is described in the HTML protocol published in 1991--three
> years before the initial Eolas patent filing.
>
> To answer complaints that such a method would weigh down pages with heavy
> data loads, Microsoft proposed shifting that data to a separate frame.
>
> While declining to comment on the specifics of the meeting or its plans
> for IE, Microsoft did warn that the Eolas patent threatened more than
> just Internet Explorer.
>
> "This is not an issue just for IE," said Wallent. "This is a potential
> issue for Netscape Navigator, for Opera and for other browser
> vendors. This is an industry issue."
>
> One attendee of the meeting who asked not to be named said that while
> Microsoft's workarounds were technically promising, their legal soundness
> was uncertain.
>
> Worse, this attendee said, the implementation of the workarounds would
> require a huge amount of work on the part of Web authors.
>
> "When you think about this, having to go around the patent highlights
> the stupidity of the patent system," he said. "Everyone in the field
> is very saddened by the whole thing, that we have to go through this
> exercise. The W3C has worked very hard to make the Web remain patent
> free and this might be the one thing that screws it all up. It's really
> very frustrating."
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____________________________
NYLXS: New Yorker Free Software Users Scene
Fair Use -
because it's either fair use or useless....
NYLXS is a trademark of NYLXS, Inc
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