Prior art concerns now mean a patent affecting how Websites build small interactive programs powering banners and customer service into their pages – and which is the subject of a $520 million award against Microsoft by Eolas Technologies – has been ordered into reconsideration by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Deputy patent commissioner Stephen G. Kunin, said to have cited an outcry from a widespread enough Internet contingent, ordered the PTO's examiners to review the patent, awarded to a University of California research trio in late 1998, according to the Associated Press.
One of the three inventors went on to found Eolas and license the patent exclusively. Eolas has held that Microsoft's Internet Explorer violated the patent, compelling the jury award and a commitment from Microsoft to redesign IE next year to require surfers to click dialogue boxes visiting sites using one of the specialized Eolas programs.
But the AP said that Tim Berners-Lee, recognized as the inventor of the World Wide Web, urged the PTO to re-examine the patent for validity, saying he was concerned that a Microsoft re-design would make millions of Web pages and other software products incompatible. Lee also was said to fear Web developers could respond with their own tweaking outside long-held Web standards, the AP said.
A PTO spokeswoman, Brigid Quinn, told the news wire the re-examination could take a year, but Eolas can still enforce the disputed patent during that time. The AP said it took just past four years for the patent to be awarded in the first place.
