Supreme Court won't review Microsoft patent appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear Microsoft's appeal in a lawsuit that has resulted in a preliminary jury verdict of more than $500 million for alleged patent infringement in Internet Explorer.

The court's decision not to hear the case involving Eolas Technologies, announced without comment on Monday, clears the way for proceedings to continue before a federal district judge.

The August 2003 decision from a federal jury in Chicago sent shock waves across the Internet. If Eolas and its business partner, the University of California, eventually prevail, the effects could force a redesign of Web pages that use plug-in applications like Macromedia Flash and Adobe Acrobat that run inside a Web browser.

In subsequent attempts to convince Congress to reform federal patent laws, Microsoft has cited the Eolas case as an example of "abusive litigation" that should be curbed by legislative action.

A federal appeals court in March partially reversed the original decision and sent it back to the district judge for a new trial.

Microsoft hopes that this time it will be able to show evidence about an early Web browser, called Viola, created by a computer programmer and artist named Pei Wei and demonstrated to other researchers a year before the University of California filed for its patent. The university and its spinoff company, Eolas, share the rights to a patent that they claim covers plug-ins and applets that are invoked through a Web browser.

Eolas' patent, numbered 5,838,906 and granted in November 1998, discusses a way to execute a program on a remote server and send data back to a Web browser, "thus providing the user of the client computer with interactive features."

[Earl Benser]

Sounds like it's time....

... for MS to throw more money on the table, like maybe 500
million or so.

[alecm3]

I wonder

Just how much money will Mozilla, Opera or Apple (Safari) will have to throw on the table - they all have infringing browsers...
Having one-man company own a part of the free HTML standard (object and embed tags) is NOT a good idea.

[shortyness]

Please rewrite

It would be every web surfer's dream if Internet Explorer was rewritten so it could not display those CPU hogging, in-your-face type annoying Macromedia Flash advertisements.
Only then we can view still pictures and news without all the distractions.

[alecm3]

Oh Yeah?

Have you heard of Flickr.com, Youtube.com or Chatango.com - they all use Flash! And they have a lot of users, and it's not their users dream to stop using them.

[Karios Kasra]

Not every surfer's dream.

If IE were re-written to exclude annoying protocols and scripts, others will rise to take their place. The market is built like this for atypical people with the drive to install a flashblocker to enjoy better browsing, while leaving those other apathetic folks to their own devices. It works out perfectly.

[Bill Dautrive]

Irony

Irony: Microsoft complaininfg about other abusing the patent system

This is reason #101000111000001111000110101011001101 why software patents need to be banned.

Copyright is all that is needed.