Eolas sues corporate giants over Web technology

Eolas Technologies, a company that ground through a years-long patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft, now has sued a large swath of corporate powers for infringement of that same patent and another related patent concerning interactive programs on Web sites.

The list of defendants includes many high-profile companies inside and outside the tech world: Adobe Systems, Amazon, Apple, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, Go Daddy, Google, J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase, Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises, Staples, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments, Yahoo, and YouTube.

Eolas' suit is not to be taken lightly. Although the earlier Microsoft case took many years to resolve, and Eolas by no means won a complete victory, the patent involved did overall withstand heavy legal challenges despite many on the Web rallying to Microsoft's aid. Microsoft and Eolas won't describe terms of their 2007 settlement of the patent case, but Eolas did say it expected to pay its shareholders a 2007 dividend afterward.

"What distinguishes this case from most patent suits is that so many established companies named as defendants are infringing a patent that has been ruled valid by the Patent Office on three occasions," said Mike McKool, head of the national law firm McKool Smith and Eolas' lead attorney.

This diagram shows one example of the newly granted Eolas patent 7,599,985 in use.

(Credit: Eolas)

The U.S. District Court suit, filed in the eastern district of Texas, seeks preliminary and permanent injunctions prohibiting the plaintiffs from using the patented technology; payment for damages from infringement, including treble damages because the alleged infringement was willful; attorney's fees; and a jury trial.

Eolas conducts research and development but also has a separate licensing department. "Eolas seeks to return value to its shareholders by commercializing these technologies through strategic alliances, licensing and spin-offs," the company says of itself.

The earlier Microsoft case involved U.S. patent 5,838,906, "Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document," which involved browsers launching a helper application such as Adobe Flash.

In the new case, that patent is joined by a newer one granted Tuesday, No., 7,599,985, with a very similar title: "Distributed hypermedia method and system for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document."

"The '985 Patent is a continuation of the '906 patent, and allows Web sites to add fully-interactive embedded applications to their online offerings through the use of plug-in and Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Web development techniques," Eolas said in a statement about the lawsuit.

Ajax caught on midway through the decade as a way to endow Web pages with interactive features based in part on the JavaScript programming language. Ajax is used in many Web sites including Google Maps and Yahoo Mail.

The '985 patent, originally filed Aug. 9, 2002, involves a program embedded in a Web page--or "hypermedia document," as the patent language calls it more generally. Here's an excerpt from the patent abstract's description of the technology:

A system allowing user of a browser program on a computer connected to an open distributed hypermedia to access and execute an embedded programming object. The program object is embedded into a hypermedia document much like data objects.

The user may select the program object from the screen. Once selected the program executes on the user's (client's) computer or may execute on a remote server or additional remote computers in a distributed processing arrangement.

After launching the program object, the user is able to interact with the object as the invention provides for ongoing interprocess communication between the application object (program) and the browser program.

And later, in a bit more detail:

The present invention allows a user at a client computer connected to a network to locate, retrieve, and manipulate objects in an interactive way. The invention not only allows the user to use a hypermedia format to locate and retrieve program objects, but also allows the user to interact with an application program located at a remote computer.

Interprocess communication between the hypermedia browser and the embedded application program is ongoing after the program object has been launched. The use is able to use a vast amount of computing power beyond that which is contained in the user's client computer.

Apple, Google, Yahoo, Texas Instruments, and Office Depot each declined to comment on the suit. Staples, Playboy, Sun, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase, Adobe, and Perot Systems didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Elizabeth Driscoll, vice president of public relations for Go Daddy, said in a statement, "We have not seen the lawsuit and, therefore, cannot comment on it. However, we are unaware of the basis for any such claims and we will defend the case vigorously."

Updated 1:26 p.m., 2:09 p.m., 2:35 p.m., and 4:08 p.m. PDT with comment from companies.

[Random_Walk]

It's one thing to take on one corporation (of any size) and win... now they're hoping to take on the combined (and likely coordinated) weight of all those corps?

Good frickin' luck with that one.

[myles taylor]

That's exactly what I was thinking. It's like the little country that goes to war with it's larger neighbor and gets a favorable peace treaty, and then declares war on the entire UN.

[rapier1]

With a strong patent and enough capital they probably can do this. It's not unheard of.

[gthiruva]

Unfortunately, patents are assumed to be valid in a court of law - even stupid ones. So, if you're sued, you can't defend yourself by claiming that the patent is stupid and never should have been granted. Instead, your only hope is to show that you are not using the methods described in the patent (7,599,985 in this case). And since that patent is so ridiculously broad, luck is sadly on Eolas' side.

[Random_Walk]

Dunno... Microsoft had X number of lawyers who decided to use a given defense. Combine all the legal teams of all those companies up there, and I'm fairly certain that they can field one hell of a combined pool of research capacity, argument testing, and etc.

Nazi Germany was able to squish its opponents on one front... but when they opened up a second and pushed eastward, they got drawn into a war of attrition that they couldn't possibly hope to win.

[kswartz26]

A strong patent is the key. This one was only filed in 2002; I suspect a ton of prior art is available to invalidate this.

[Mergatroid Mania]

This is exactly why software patents should never have been allowed in the first place. This is a complete waste of everyone's time and money.
The American patent office will allow anything. It's lucky for us nobody ever patented the hammer. We'd all be stuck paying for licensing fees or we'd have to use a rock to hammer in nails. (probably still get sued anyway).

[Random_Walk]

"I suspect a ton of prior art is available to invalidate this."

You and me both... Microsoft was unable to prove any, but I honestly don't know if they even tried that line of reasoning.

[Vegaman_Dan]

I wonder... if they lose against this larger list of companies, would this affect the earller settlement with Microsoft? Will this company suddenly owe Microsoft money?

Also curious as thsi includes a new patent, why they aren't going after Microsoft again. Seems like easy money.

How do you choose which companies to go after? Looks like they are attempting to basically sue the Internet itself.

[captain_numerica]

@RandomWalk - I'm sure MS fought this tooth and nail. I'd bet they tried every avenue.

That said, I hope this patent is invalidated. This is just silly.

[mbenedict]

You kids are probably too young to remember that the world already fought a war against the '906 patent and lost. The battles included many rounds of rare USPTO re-examinations (including prior-art brought directly by the W3C), not to mention appeals all the way to the Supreme Court (denied). The '906 unfortunately withstood all challenges.

So even if the '985 gets invalidated, the '906 patent is very strong. The chances that it would be invalidated now, though possible, is basically nil. However Eolas must still prove that each of the defendant violated the precise language of the patents.

By the way, the holder of this patent is actually the University of California. Dr. Doyle was working there when he "invented" the claims in '906. Eolas is his company, which is the exclusive licensee of '906.

[zeroplane]

Well let's hope they waist all of their remaining money and shrivel up and die...

[wahoospa]

When is this kind of crap going to end?

[Dalkorian]

When software patents go away?

[Lerianis3]

Hopefully, software patents will go away VERY soon, at least piecemeal software patents.

[techman21]

This is a ridiculously broad patent, and covers an obvious process.

[rapier1]

Obvious now, but was it obvious at the time? The original filing date of 5,838,906 was 1994 after all. http://www.w3.org/2003/09/public-faq.html

@rapier1

Yes, it was obvious in 1994 to anyone who needed to solve a similar problem. The main issue with software patents is that 99.999% of inventions are created only when there is an immediate need. The solution is trivial and cheap to create. With millions of developers, if 1 gets a patent (and he's rarely the first - it's just the prior inventors did it for an in-house or private project and don't care about the system), everyone else is screwed.

[kswartz26]

@rapier1: I second the fact that it was obvious to any who did early client/mainframe programming in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. Also the 906 patent DID have prior art, but it was ruled unusable due to bureaucratic bungling. The new patent gets a whole new chance, and IT wasn't filed until 2002. This was a heck of a lot more obvious then.

[rapier1]

I'm not sure it's entirely obvious as the patent method at the time did deal specifically with hyper-media. The devil is in the details when it comes to claims.

[Random_Walk]

"I'm not sure it's entirely obvious as the patent method at the time did deal specifically with hyper-media."

May want to Google for "Tim Berners-Lee" :)

[Vegaman_Dan]

Just because something is obvious doesn't mean that companies don't go to effort to file patents for it anyways. Microsoft, Apple, HP, Dell, etc- they all take out patents on what seems to be obvious if only to make sure someone else doesn't beat them to it and force them to pay licensing fees after the fact. :/

[Len Bullard]

The problem is "you may want to Google Tim Berners-Lee". That line of thinking and poor grasp of the history of hypermedia development is how they lost this battle last time. You may want to Google other researchers and applications instead of the insulated and largely self-referential work at the W3C. The essential claim of the last patent was not a hypermedia feature per se.

The problem of prior art is most of the work is not time-stamped in terms of how it was disseminated. It doesn't matter if the work is prior but the patent filer cannot be proven to have known about it. They bet heavily on work that could not be proven to be available to Doyle at the time. Much of the early work was not formally published although informally distributed.

[Random_Walk]

It. Was. A. Joke.

FFS...

[Len Bullard]

Good to know. The point remains, if you want less of this in the future you have to play the game. As much as there needs to be changes in national and international IP laws (don't overfocus on the USPTO; they implement, they don't legislate), becoming familiar with patent processes and paying attention to how you document what you develop will do more to get rid of patent trolls than any other approach.

[lixpaulian]

He he, this is possible due to the idiotic patents system in the USA, where a bunch of old people is rubber stamping everything thrown at them, and mostly it is the obvious.

[Lerianis3]

Yep, that's pretty much the mean for the patent office.

[blackCoffeeLover]

only in Texas..

[Michichael]

"Look, I patented breathing! PAY ME OR YOU CAN'T BREATHE!"

Same concept.

[Vegaman_Dan]

There's an app for that at the Apps Store. And yes, it's patented.

[Michichael]

Well my patent came before their patent! The rubber stamp says so!

Can you imagine where science would be without patent trolls that try to patent obvious proci?

[winstein]

We will see if "pigs get fat hogs get slaughtered" holds true in this case.

[bedney42]

Why am I not shocked that this was filed in the 'eastern district federal court of Texas'...

Cheers,

- Bill

[Dalkorian]

LOL, I couldn't help but notice that too.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Wonder if we can patent the idea of a patent troll. Would that stop it?

[robotechie]

Well, I'm shocked, *SHOCKED*, that this was eastern district federal court of Texas! ;-)

[TomPhilo]

You know change a few words - "browser" to screen, hypermedia to "keyboard" and you just patented the IBM 360 OS VTAM from the 1960s . . . they need to sue IBM right now over it!

No different concept than that OS and the few that preceeded it.

Matter of fact, you can even apply that patent to the way runway lighting is activated by a airplane radio.

[gggg sssss]

that would be prior art

[CyR00k]

This keeps happening....maybe it would be in the best interests of all companies to just do everything with open source software and give code back to the open source community. It would end all of these stupid patent trolling people who shouldn't have been award patents for things that were already available in the open source community.

[Lerianis3]

Ah, but most of the open source agreements say that after you do that, you CANNOT sell the thing in question for MONEY!

[zyxxy]

Oh, you are completely wrong on that one.

I have never seen any FOSS license that says you cannot ask for money. Yes you have to provide the source, but you can recover distribution costs. And you can charge whatever the market will bear for binaries. For example, Red Hat charges corporations for binary ports of Linux. You can get the source for free, but Red Hat provides a service to large corporations by providing the porting, testing, and debugging effort. The same is true for any open source program.

[Talib]

The '906 patent was likely novel in 1994. The '985 patent, however, should be null and void considering that by 2002 both Java applets and ActiveX had long been actively used. The patent office has a serious problem with software patents and they need reforms in place yesterday. Indeed I do believe we could find someone patenting something as simple as breathing (metaphorically), as an earlier poster suggested, and the rest of us would be forced to pay.

[rip98]

The '985 Patent claims priority to the '906 Patent. That means its validity can only be tested against prior art that predates the 1994 filing date, as long as whatever is claimed is supported by the specification that was filed in 1994.

[catbutt5]

A patent troll has been awarded a patent that essentially covers every Web page in existence. Freaking Hilarious!!!
There should be a simple test... if you didn't invent at least one of the little icons in your patent submission, it shouldn't pass. Eolas is merely stringing other peoples inventions together in an obvious way.
It's like giving a troll a patent for driving across a bridge. He had nothing to do with building that bridge or the invention of the car but now he gets to sue everyone that passes over that bridge in a car even though people were already doing that.
It's a sad time to be a software developer in America.

[AluminumMonster]

Im gonna write a patent where my patent s "some cool new invention that people will need in the future", I cant wait to be rich.

[Kiljoy616]

So do it, that what patents are about, mostly software based patents which create nothing do nothing till someone really sits down and kills them selves to put out a real product or code.

That is the problem with the patent system, and this is just one of many patent troll companies that have 10 of thousands of patents.

I have not read much on real patents in the news, what I mean is real stuff like hardware, all this patent is coming from trolls and software vague ideas. So forget about a cool invention, just make something up that is so broad that given the next 20 years or more you will be able to sue people and they will pay if nothing else just so they can move on with life and business.

[jtjt145]

tomorrow someone will file a patent claiming that their method of breathing air extends life ...

[scoupe1992]

Sun Micro owns the license and patent on JavaScript. I'm personally surprised that they haven't stepped in on this. Eolas's case holds no merit due to the simple fact that they're essentially claiming they own the rights and patents to functionality given to JavaScript by Sun Micro when it was developed. Eolas' patents wouldn't exist without Sun Micro and Netscape having developed JavaScript in the first place. So, any judge with half a brain or a little knowledge of JavaScript would throw the case out based solely on the fact they're claiming they own the rights to someone else's intellectual property.

[Kyanar]

No, actually. JavaScript was not developed by Sun Microsystems at all, and bears no relation to Java whatsoever. In fact, the correct name for "JavaScript" is actually "ECMAScript" for that very reason.

[boom226]

"JavaScript was originally developed by Brendan Eich of Netscape under the name Mocha, later LiveScript, and finally renamed to JavaScript.[2] In December 1995, Sun Microsystems and Netscape announced JavaScript in a press release.[3] In March 1996 Netscape Navigator 2.0 was out, featuring support for JavaScript."

It was not developed by Sun but they had a role in it. Netscape then submitted javascript to ECMA and javascript was listed as compatible with ECMAScript.

[kaiman75]

There are some important questions that aren't answered in this article:

What exactly are they trying to accomplish with this suit? Do they want monetary damages for every plug-in or third party app that exits that uses the protocol layer to launch it? What affect do you think this will have on the future of web apps/plugins if they win?

[Kiljoy616]

YES, this company has share holder that bet on patent suits.

[pmonks]

It's mini-SCO!

[Random_Walk]

Actually, it's an SCO on steroids.

SCO tried to sue over copyright, not patents, and SCO had a weak-assed case at best (and didn't even own the copyright, gave the contested source code away under GPLv2 license in their own "OpenLinux" product, etc). They also made the mistake of going up against IBM straight off - you simply do not do that and expect to keep your soul.

Eolas OTOH has already won one case against Microsoft over one of these patents. They have a precedent and a patent that has been tested rather well (though it's not invulnerable). Unlike SCO and its alleged copyright, Eolas actually does own the patents in question. Unlike SCO, Eolas doesn't showboat or obfuscate - they jump in and get to work.

We're talking a far more dangerous enemy here than you realize.

[darkr]

btw its a 1 man company and with some being paid to the university of chicago (the previous employer of boyle)

[necniv]

I've patented time travel. The company that actually figures out how to do it will find a lawsuit at their doorstep.

Patent law is completely upside down backward.

[zalun]

Actually - this one is not possible
They would definitely come before you and patent that :D
And then some patent troll will come before them
Actually - it will be the first ever thing patented.

[zyxxy]

The very absence of any time travel patents proves that time travel is not possible!

You sir are a genius!

[Random_Walk]

"The very absence of any time travel..."

...in one of the two possible directions, anyway. :)

[Commander_Spock]

Now, Now, Now.... OS/2 does not need a "B-R-O-W-S-E-R" to get online to do certain things; so, it is any wonder why IBM was not named in this "Eolas (suit against) corporate giants over Web technology.

Re: "In November, 1994, OS/2 Warp 3.0 was released. It was the first PC operating system to have built-in Internet support. At the time, OS/2 critics said that Internet support was just "more geek crap," but today every major operating system ships with built-in Internet support. The release of OS/2 Warp Connect followed, and included full network support out of the box for all the major protocols, including IPX, TCP/IP, and NetBIOS. At this point, the focus for OS/2 became the "networked computer." When Windows 95 was released in August, 1995, resellers reported record sales on OS/2, as many people saw how Microsoft's hack didn't quite cut it for real-world, mission-critical usage.

OS/2 Warp 4.0 (codename "Merlin") was released in August, 1996. It's new features included a "beautified" GUI; the new graphical icons and "widgets" were designed by an ex-Apple programmer. The beauty was much more than skin deep, however. Also included were OpenGL support, OpenDoc support, and a full Java Development Kit, which included a Java Virtual Machine, which allows Java applications to be run independent of a browser..."

http://www.os2bbs.com/OS2News/OS2Warp.html

Good hunting at "One-Minute-To-Midnight" Eolas.

Long Lives OS/2 Warp and The Web!

"Live Long And Prosper"!

Commander_Spock And Crew

[Commander_Spock]

And, how about if the "food" "water" and "air" supply routes (that are under our control); and, which lead to this anomaly (Eolas) are disrupted!

[Vegaman_Dan]

It could be that there's no money to be made by suing IBM, a company who is shrinking on all fronts, a company that gave up their computer business to focus on services, then started shutting that down as well as they scramble to find a place for themselves in this new IT world.

[Commander_Spock]

Hey "Vegaman_Dan "! Why are you attempting to change the topic of this discussion; and, in any case it was this same controlling attitude of the dudes from the Redmond Campus that did in the IBM's PC Business by screwing up the OS/2 Source-Codes that IBM was depending on them for for their PC Business; but, there is news for you where Lotus Symphony 1.3, Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1, Lotus Sametime......... are concerned.

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/notesanddomino/nd85.html

And; better yet, just you wait until they get ported to the OS/2 Operating System and the world will know for sure which "company is really shrinking"!

"All Your Base Are Belong To Us"!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oh3gqOEKU

Cool!

[zyxxy]

OS/2? Warp? Interesting back in the late 90s. Maybe. Notes? Domino? Never interesting in the least.

IBM has moved on Spock. Time for you to move on as well.....

[Commander_Spock]

Re: "IBM has moved on Spock. Time for you to move on as well....."

If you think the US lost in Vietnam - Think Again! Think about the "Operating Systems' War" that never was. And, who ever said that the Operating System (and, not the Applications) was the network???.

[Commander_Spock]

Re: "If you think the US lost in (to) Vietnam - Think Again!"

Think Coca-Cola!