Observers of patent skirmished like the current one between Acacia Media Technologies and several players in the adult Internet may want to watch this one as well: a number of companies and standards bodies hitting the Net running in a prior art hunt aimed at overturning a verdict “that could force major changes on the Internet’s most popular software products,” as CNET phrased it late October 31.
These companies and bodies want to find the prior art that predates a patent held by Eolas Technologies, which describes how a Web browser calls up separate applications within Web pages, CNET said. Eolas recently won a federal jury’s judgment against Microsoft for infringing the patent, but “an unusual filing” by the World Wide Web Consortium, CNET continued, resurrected the prior art argument in the case.
The October 23 filing is asking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine the Eolas patent as it does or doesn’t apply to HTML Plus, technology the Eolas case judge formerly considered as prior art but barred from evidence in the trial, CNET said.
"In view of the invalidity of (Eolas') claims and the considerable adverse impact the '906 patent will have on the larger World Wide Web community, a Director-initiated reexamination is appropriate," the consortium filing said.
The $521 million patent infringement win put Eolas on the international map and “has focused the attention of the software industry in a way few other patent cases have,” CNET said. “Microsoft has already detailed plans to change its Internet Explorer browser, which could force countless Web developers to rewrite their Web pages.
Fear of the implications of the patent has inspired vendors of plug-in technologies--including Macromedia and Sun Microsystems--and Microsoft's direct competitors in the browser market to rush to Microsoft's defense.”
The case even provoked the World Wide Web Consortium to re-evaluate its own patent policies, CNET added: the group chose in the end to restrict the use of patented technologies in its recommendations. And the case also helped prod the Federal Trade Commission to recommend last week that patents be made easier to challenge, in large enough part by way of changing the rules on prior art consideration.
Eolas is not exactly overjoyed that the World Wide Web Consortium wants to reopen the argument. "The W3C has a public policy against software patents," founder Mike Doyle told CNET. "And what they're doing now is driven by their political agenda to fight against the whole concept of software patents. It's clear that they're trying to circumvent the rules to overturn a ruling by a jury in a federal lawsuit."
