Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Patent victory for Microsoft
In a not-so surprising decision, the US Patent Office rejected all 10 claims from Eolas' patent. Having some degree of familiarity with the patent process, what was surprising to me was the earlier decision to award Eolas about half a billion dollars.
If upheld, the patent could force Microsoft and other browser makers to take out a license if they want to run within the browser applications like Macromedia's Flash animation software, Adobe's PDF document software, or Sun's Java programming language. A workaround could disrupt millions of pages around the Web, industry and standards experts warn.
When I read Eolas' patent, what struck me was its generality - there was stuff which covered something as general as the idea of launching applications from within a browser window. Patents such as these are intended to be primarily defensive, not offensive.
One hates to side with Microsoft on anything related to intellectual property rights, but in this particular case, they have the better case. Has justice been served? That, unfortunately, is an interesting question.
