As we reported just yesterday, Eolas has lost two of three legal disputes with Microsoft over it's patent and licensing claims. Eolas now claims the fight is far from over and has mailed an "office action" to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Eolas says the patent office had wrongfully withdrawn 10 of it's previous claims, including a previous finding from February. Eolas attorney Martin Lueck, of Minneapolis-based Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP, said the patent office examiner had issued a new action—based on yet another piece of "prior art"—to reject the patent's claims. The prior-art piece was outside the examples offered by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), which brought the prior-art question to the attention of the patent office in November 2003.
"Eolas is attacking HTML itself. This goes to our heart," W3C CEO Steve Bratt said. "The patent could force Web site owners to modify their pages and server-side applications."
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Eolas says the patent office had wrongfully withdrawn 10 of it's previous claims, including a previous finding from February. Eolas attorney Martin Lueck, of Minneapolis-based Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP, said the patent office examiner had issued a new action—based on yet another piece of "prior art"—to reject the patent's claims. The prior-art piece was outside the examples offered by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), which brought the prior-art question to the attention of the patent office in November 2003.
"Eolas is attacking HTML itself. This goes to our heart," W3C CEO Steve Bratt said. "The patent could force Web site owners to modify their pages and server-side applications."
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Note: You must contact Microsoft Technical Support to obtain this hotfix. It cannot be directly downloaded (yet).
if someone is gona try to enforce a so called patiant... they should do it right away as soon as they find out... not when it's worth billions of dollors... that's just sad
also.. I'd say this patiant is invaled on numerious grounds... well whatever.. I've said my piece
Even if the patent is pure air, I still think Microsoft needs to be punished for 'stealing' it in the first place. Otherwise it gives the impression that it is okay to steal stuff and maybe later pay for it.
And for those of you who say that 'why should they pay, if it is pure air', you have to remember at that time when Eolas and Microsoft was talking about it, it was a new thing, a thing that would be play a key role in Internet Explorer.
ps. I think that $500 million is way too much.
STV
Without having read each and every allegedly incriminating email used as evidence, I can safely tell you that Microsoft's employees are no strangers to "street vernacular". They use every-day common idioms just like you and I do. It is quite easy to see that, in a private email, one might be excited and type out "come on, this is a steal of a deal" or "we can practically steal this, it's so cheap", or other phrases to that effect.
It is a common usage today to say that a potential purchase is a "steal" when something is offered for sale at or under the price we ourselves would ask, were we the ones to be selling the item. Distorting that kind of colloquialism is what lawyers get the big bucks for. Sadly, MS has proven itme and again that they can write software (the quality of which is left for you to decide), but they can't hire competent lawyers to save their souls.... or at least, their company.
Equally sadly, a Judge might see all of this, but if the Defense lawyers don't present it, then it's not on the record. And no way is a Judge gonna act as if it is on the record - that way lies reversal on appeal.
So decrees.....
Da Judge
Some people don't read small letters
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