
The Web’s longest nightmare ends: Eolas patents are dead on appeal - eksith
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/07/the-webs-longest-nightmare-ends-eolas-patents-are-dead-on-appeal
======
comex
> VPlot and Viola were demonstrated to Sun Microsystems in May 1993, months
> before Doyle claimed to have conceived of his invention.

If you think that it makes sense to give the first person to come up with an
idea exclusive rights over it for 20 years, compare the amount of innovation
supplied to the world in having the idea of putting something interactive on
the Web to the amount of innovation that has been built on interactivity on
the Web (and yes, the patent is very close to that broad). The former is
hardly trivial - it was a novel idea and would have been a very cool demo at
the time - but the latter is _half of the technology industry_. Consider the
tens of millions of dollars Eolas was able to extract from random companies
while doing nothing, and how much more they might have gained if they had
happened to have been a few months earlier. Consider the stupid hack required
for years to work around the patent in IE - it could have been worse, since
this patent was broad enough that nobody was going to stop innovating because
of it yet not broad enough to lack a simple workaround, but it was still
stupid.

I have a hard time seeing who would be harmed if software patents were
categorically invalid.

~~~
raverbashing
> I have a hard time seeing who would be harmed if software patents were
> categorically invalid.

The lawyers. Hence...

And the crybabies that think that all they do is a unique invention and that
it costs millions of dollars to write a couple of lines of code

~~~
codesuela
> And the crybabies that think that all they do is a unique invention and that
> it costs millions of dollars to write a couple of lines of code

I think that is a great point. I believe that many people think that you
should get a patent for something if you thought of something first. It
certainly has an appeal towards the common man if you can get rewarded for
just an idea. As IT professionals we all know someone who has an idea and just
needs someone to execute.

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greenyoda
_" Appeals ensued but were inconclusive; the case ultimately settled out for
more than $100 million, with just over $30 million going to Eolas' co-
plaintiff, the University of California."_

It's pretty depressing that taxpayer-funded universities are also in the
patent troll business.

~~~
abhishekkr
It was testimony from the said taxpayer-funded university that killed the
patent.

"While UC lawyers cooperated with the plaintiffs, two UC Berkeley-trained
computer scientists were key witnesses in the effort to demolish the Eolas
patents."

~~~
kd0amg
I took that to mean the testimony was from people who had studied at the
university, not the university itself.

------
phaus
>It was the culmination of a bold campaign by a man named Michael Doyle to
levy a vast patent tax on the modern web.

It wasn't a bold campaign, the man's a coward and a piece of shit. He should
be going to prison for trying to extort billions of dollars from technology
companies.

~~~
CDRdude
What, exactly, is cowardly about him? If anything, he seems like a bold piece
of shit rather than a cowardly one.

~~~
patmcguire
Coward seems to be in the bag of words people reach for when trying to say
someone is really, really bad.

------
hga
" _The company relocated to East Texas...._ "

This, I gather, was a mistake.

While the East Texas "Rocket Docket" gained notoriety early on (and probably
for some time), I've read recently that due to all the patent lawsuits they've
been handling they've learned what it's all about and are no longer so
plaintiff friendly. I suppose the bad press had an effect as well.

~~~
eksith
Better late than never, I suppose.

I hope the Texans have enough pride in their community to pursue _ethical_
processes toward business advancement. Patent trolls are business poison, but
casual disregard for people is community poison. There's no reason ethics
should get in the way of profits.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Patent judges are federal judges, appointed by the President. The opinions of
Texans at large are likely not very important.

~~~
gruseom
But a lot of these are jury trials, aren't they?

~~~
hga
Including this one, which is why I brought up this point in the discussion.

Here an East Texas jury looked at the facts etc. as portrayed by both sides,
the law as instructed by the judge, and delivered the "right" verdict, which
happened to be against the plaintiff.

------
cek
In 1999 I was deposed by the firm going after Microsoft. I had driven the
design & implementation of the <object> tag in IE3, which was central to their
case.

Coincidentally, and ironically, it turned out my then-soon-to-be, but now-ex,
brother-in-law was a lawyer at that firm (or a related one, it was never
clear). He called in rich a few years later.

------
lifeisstillgood
Lesson to all Patent Trolls - 20 years of suppressing innovation and
generating no value can result in you being millions of dollars richer.

Do not negotiate with Terrorists, do not feed wolves, do not pay patent
trolls.

------
yuhong
Remember click to activate in Internet Explorer caused by Eolas?

~~~
plorkyeran
I'm sort of amused by how at the time people thought it was awful, but it
wasn't all that much later that click-to-play for Flash became a moderately
popular feature.

~~~
yuhong
Of course, these two features are completely different.

------
nivla
You know what is weird is that all these patent trolls are scaring me into
filing for defensive patents. Its scary since the law has now changed from
"First to invent" to "First to file". You come up with a great idea, troll X
notices it, files for patents and then sues you back.

~~~
eurleif
You could still claim prior art if you used or published the idea before they
patented it. The difference between "first to invent" and "first to file"
basically only comes up when someone invents an idea but keeps it private,
which can be difficult to prove anyway. (IANAL, TINLA.)

------
acd
I think we should have less patents and more sharing. Most inventions derive
some knowledge from previous inventors, thus we are standing on the shoulder
of giants. Thus why should someone have the right to patent code?

~~~
protomyth
In most places, the players know not to be pains and patent licensing works
fairly well (pool patents, spec, standard, small fee). Software has a
problem[1] because many don't make money off the software and instead make
money off other means. There is not a nicely understood product to pay with.
Where we see it all go bad (e.g. medicine), it has a lot to do with the rules
of the systems (e.g. clinical trials) or just plain stupidity (e.g. 3D
printing).

If h.264 licensing had just been from hardware accelerators and not software
implementation / content, then no fuss would have been raised. I so hoped they
would see the light with h.265.

1) well, other than the stupidity of patenting business processes as if they
are some technical invention

------
vermontdevil
I'm surprised there's people in East Texas district that has not served on a
jury trial for patent infringement.

Always that district court. It's obvious the court there is part of the
problem.

------
gohrt
Would that Doyle had patented browser URL history spamming instead, and saved
us all from arstechnica's assualt on our browser history list.

