Normally, the idea of a patent is a good one. Ignoring the influence peddling and other activities that’s led to Congress lengthening the lifetimes of some patents, trademarks and copyrights to absurd lengths, protecting a patent holder’s intellectual ownership is worthwhile. It allows them time to implement their ideas and reap the rewards for their work. But, as with all things, there are times when unintended consequences outweigh that good.
I wonder if there should be rules or regulations within the Patent Office for determining when granting a patent causes more harm than good when it could result in collateral damage, including beyond our borders. At least I hope there are internal discussions about the effects of their actions. Here’s one case where the effects could be severe.
Last month, I wrote about a company called Eolas that came out with a goofy Hurricane Relief Edition of their software. This was in their spare time. Their (actually, it’s a one-man company) main business is trying to cash in on a patent about plugins run from a browser. The Patent Office ruled this past week, overturning its previous finding, and we may be the losers. Back to the courts.
It’s a strange feeling to actually want Microsoft to win on something.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected an attempt to invalidate a far-reaching browser patent controlled by Eolas, despite fears that the patent and others like it could lead to Internet chaos.
Eolas claims it covers the way Microsoft Internet Explorer uses plug-ins, and in 2003 won a $521 million judgement after a federal jury agreed IE infringed on the patent.
Following this judgement, Microsoft said it would redesign the browser to get around Eolas’ patents, potentially breaking large numbers of Web pages in the process.
The University of California issued a press release on this. They also released the 73 page Patent Office notice.
“intelectual”, you say? Fascinating.
It’s not clear what your objection is. That it’s a lot of money? That MS infringed? That the USPTO shouldn’t have confirmed the patent on reexam? That Eolas is/are scum for cashing in on Katrina? Eolas may be scum but it looks like Bill’s going to wish he’d taken a license. The District Court will likely find the patent not invalid in view of the reexamination, and Doyle and UC will get the cabbage they apparently deserved all along from folk who should’ve licensed instead of infringing. Or do you know something you’re not telling? Illuminate us, please ….
What’s bad about forcing MS to be innovative with their browser technology? The main knock against MS is that they are not innovators, merely knock off artists, copying from the lead of others. If that is true, maybe something good will evolve from this decision.
Marconi is credited by the public with inventing radio while Tesla (after his death) was the one who received the patent. Truth is there were a number of people around the world working on radio at the time. Marconi had better PR and Tesla got the paperwork in early enough with the right combination of things that satisfied the Supreme Court years later to get the patent. And yet, both were building bit by bit on the work of others in addition to their own exceptional contributions. It was really a group effort, in a sense, that got radio “invented.”
Unlike radio where the patent was not a hinderance to its implemtation and wide usage, the Eolas patent may create a real problem far beyond who gets the credit and the right to charge for its use.
Don’t get me wrong. On a certain level, I applaud Eolas for figuring out how to patent something that they didn’t really invent. They recognized there was something to patent in their implimentation that the real inventors didn’t (or weren’t interested in patenting).
Microsoft reasonably felt there was prior art that invalidated the patent. Now, instead of paying the fee, they’ve indicated they will rewrite their browser to not infringe, making untold numbers of web pages unusable. Other browser makers may follow suit. This means a US copyright issue will affect people the world over. Sure, there may be a workaround, the pages get rewritten, MS pays, whatever, whenever.
Court rulings aside, the question I was considering was is there a point where the potential damage caused by granting a patent outweigh the normal reasons for doing so. Is this something that’s ever considered within the Patent Office? It’s a philosophical question that is ulimately rhetorical given the way things work in this country.
In defense of Microsoft,
If Eolas didn’t invent the technique, the patent is no more than a technicality, hence they have no moral rights over the technique.
It is wrong to say that Microsoft is not innovative. They do innovate and they innovate a lot. Starting from bellow, there is no other operating system, like Windows Vista that offers an API based on managed code. Win32 is obsolete and the new WinFX API is based on .NET. Is there any other big operating system that exposes its services entirely in Java, for instance? No. Unix based OSs expose their services in C or C++ or Objective C, not in Java or Mono. Isn’t that innovation? I mean, isn’t it nice you have an entire API which is based on managed code? One which you can use to call the Operating System’s services and have a much lower probability of doing stupid stuff like mishandling memory pointers?
More. If Microsoft is not innovative, why do most office suits out there, like OpenOffice try to mimic MS Office? Sure, Microsoft has been following others many times, but that’s just the way of innovation. You take the other’s ideas and improve on them. Only one automaker invented the reciprocating engine, yet all automakers use it, each one adding its own new set of features.
The same happened with .NET. I work with .NET and teach .NET, namely C#. I’ve also taught Java and it is very evident how Microsoft took many ideas from Java. But they implemented them better (.NET is faster and easier to program) and they added their own features. Java also didn’t come out of the blue as its syntax is also inspired in C/C++. So no one really invents anything totally out of the blue. There are a lot of things in .NET that are not available in Java, like delegates, properties, attributes, etc. Isn’t that innovation?
Another example. I am not sure which came first, if it was PHP or ASP, which are very similar in concept. But I know of no other technology quite like ASP.NET, nothing that comes from the Java camp is near easiness and power of development of ASP.NET pages. No other technology makes web development as easy and powerful as ASP.NET, which was the first to *really* implement Object Oriented web page development. Isn’t that innovation?
One can acuse MS of monopolistic behaviour, of being commercially unfair, etc., etc. Not going into that argument. But it is totally unfair to acuse them of lack of innovation. They do innovate.
This patent puts a one man company in control of one of the critical pieces of the Web framework. ALL browsers: Firefox, Safari, Opera are now infringing this patent. Their redesign to work around the patent will break tens of millions of Web pages.
This is what the inventor of the Web Tim Berners-Lee wrote to the Under Secretary of Commerce in 2003, asking to invalidate the patent.
So what is next after this patent? A patent on hyperlinks? Or on embedding jpeg images in the web pages?