Eolas patent thrown out
p2pnet.net News:- The validity of a patent licensed to Eolas Technologies Inc, which was central to a patent infringement judgement against Microsoft last year, has been rejected by the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Held by the University of California Regents and licensed to Chicago’s Eolas, it covers technology for embedding interactive elements into Web pages and last August, Microsoft was ordered to pay $521 million for infringing the patent in its Internet Explorer browser.
However, the finding isn’t final and Microsoft has appealed it, says an IDG News Service story here, going on:
“In November, the patent office decided to review the patent after Tim Berners-Lee, the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, wrote to U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property James Rogan. Lee urged the Patent Office to invalidate the 1998 patent due to the existence of ‘prior art,’ or previous examples of the technology’s use.
“The patent office has conducted only 151 such re-examinations since 1988, despite having issued nearly four million patents in that time, said Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler, who called the decision ‘welcome,’ but ‘not surprising’ in an e-mail statement.”
Eolas and the University of California now have two months to respond to the patent office, and they’ll have a number of avenues of appeal, including an appeal in the courts, if their claim is ultimately rejected, says the report
The University of California intends to appeal the decision and remains confident of the validity of its patent, said Trey Davis, director of special projects in new media with the university system, it says, adding:
“The patent office’s determination is good news for Internet users, said one industry analyst. ‘The initial determination, while not final, is an important victory for Microsoft and many other companies,” said Joe Wilcox, a senior analyst with Jupiter Research. ‘If the Eolas patent is permanently invalidated, it will be business as usual for Microsoft, other software vendors, Web sites and anyone regularly using the Internet,’ he said.”
