Ah bloody hell. MS IE screwed, and we're screwed too.

[chequita guevara]

This decision totally screws: Microsoft, web designers, and web users. Patenting ****ing PLUG-INS!?!?!?

IE patent endgame detailed
Last modified: September 11, 2003, 12:22 PM PDT
By Paul Festa
Staff Writer, CNET News.com


Microsoft has suffered another legal setback in the patent dispute with software developer Eolas and is now advising Web authors on workarounds, as new details emerge of its plans to tweak Internet Explorer.

A federal judge last week rejected Microsoft's post-trial claim that Eolas had misrepresented the facts in the patent case, which claimed the software giant had stolen browser technology relating to plug-ins. The ruling came after a $521 million verdict against the software giant last month, and ends Microsoft's first attempt to challenge the result.

Several more post-trial motions remain to be dispensed, and Microsoft doesn't expect a final judgment in this round to be handed down until October or November. After that, Microsoft has 30 days to decide whether to appeal, which it has pledged to do.

Still, last week's loss on claims of "inequitable conduct" heightened the sense that not only Microsoft but the entire Web may soon be forced to make substantial adjustments--and that pages around the Web and on private intranets will have to be rewritten to work with an altered IE.

"If you're currently using a plug-in, you will have to change your pages quite significantly," said one person familiar with Microsoft's post-verdict plans. "There might be tools to help you do so, but currently they don't exist."

Regardless of whether the court orders Microsoft to change IE, the software giant has been conferring with its own engineers and those of companies that rely on the browser's ability to automatically launch and display multimedia programs with plug-ins--an ability the court held to be, in its current form, an infringement of the Eolas patent.

Now Microsoft, while expressing optimism that it will ultimately prevail over Eolas in the courts, is advising Web authors to take precautions and prepare for a post-Eolas world.

"We believe we are going to be successful, but the wrong thing to do is to sit back and wait for the legal process to play out," said Michael Wallent, a general manager in Microsoft's Windows division who ran the IE team for versions 5.5 and 6, and who has been involved in the Eolas defense since the suit was filed. "There are technologies that are already used today (that aren't covered by the verdict) and all we are saying is, given the choice, use the technologies that are already available to you."

Those techniques involve using scripting languages and the set of technologies marketed as dynamic HTML (DHTML) to launch external applications--a commonly available and familiar method that Microsoft does not believe infringes on the patent.

Eolas and its lawyers did not return calls seeking comment.

Wallent cited CNN.com as an example of a site that uses Macromedia Flash--a technology many consider particularly vulnerable to the patent's claims--in a non-infringing way.

While Microsoft dispenses advice and stays mum on details of the workarounds it is contemplating for IE, sources who attended the company's recent strategy session with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)--hosted in San Francisco by Macromedia--described various methods the company proposed for evading the particulars of the Eolas patent in launching applications like Macromedia Flash, Java applets and Adobe's Acrobat Reader.

According to these sources, Microsoft said at the meeting that it believed a simple dialog box inserted between the selection and the launch of a Java applet or an ActiveX control would maneuver IE out of the patent's definition of an "automated interactive experience."

Microsoft also is said to have proposed other ways to launch applications in a way that could not be held to infringe on the patent, but would avoid the ungainly dialog box solution.

One such option would move the data to the Web page itself, rather than pulling it from an external source. In Microsoft's view, attendees said, the patent only covers a situation in which the Web page called up data located elsewhere. The company is said to have told attendees that it believes so-called inline data falls outside the Eolas patent claims because it is described in the HTML protocol published in 1991--three years before the initial Eolas patent filing.

To answer complaints that such a method would weigh down pages with heavy data loads, Microsoft proposed shifting that data to a separate frame.

While declining to comment on the specifics of the meeting or its plans for IE, Microsoft did warn that the Eolas patent threatened more than just Internet Explorer.

"This is not an issue just for IE," said Wallent. "This is a potential issue for Netscape Navigator, for Opera and for other browser vendors. This is an industry issue."

One attendee of the meeting who asked not to be named said that while Microsoft's workarounds were technically promising, their legal soundness was uncertain.

Worse, this attendee said, the implementation of the workarounds would require a huge amount of work on the part of Web authors.

"When you think about this, having to go around the patent highlights the stupidity of the patent system," he said. "Everyone in the field is very saddened by the whole thing, that we have to go through this exercise. The W3C has worked very hard to make the Web remain patent free and this might be the one thing that screws it all up. It's really very frustrating."

[Oerdin]

So Eolas is claiming to have a patent on a specific plug in or on the idea of a plug in?

[SlowwHand]

Opera browser.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Oerdin
So Eolas is claiming to have a patent on a specific plug in or on the idea of a plug in?

Apparently on the idea of the plug-in.

Sloww, this ruling will affect Opera and Mozilla too. It's just that MS has the deep pockets for the half billion dollar payoff.

"This is not an issue just for IE," said Wallent. "This is a potential issue for Netscape Navigator, for Opera and for other browser vendors. This is an industry issue."

Tell you how this could screw alternative broswers if this is held up. MS loses, then buys Eolas, and denies competitors the ablity to use the technology.

[chequita guevara]

If Eolas succeeds, everyone who uses plug-ins on their site is gonna have to do a redesign, which means it's goin to cost them money.

[Ming]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Tell you how this could screw alternative broswers if this is held up. MS loses, then buys Eolas, and denies competitors the ablity to use the technology.

Congrats Che... you are now thinking like a typical MS Upper Level Executive. I'm impressed

[SlowwHand]

Affect all other's too????


Che, you up for a hanging ?

[Oerdin]

Hmmm, isn't a plug in essentially just a software patch that adds an extra feature or an ability to execute a new file type? If so then I'm not seeing where the innovation which merites a patent comes in. Wouldn't a plug in essentially just be a name for an idea (a software patch) that's been in use for decades?

[JCG]

I'm not going to "update" any of my browsers when these changes are made effective then, tough luck...

[Nubclear]

Can I patent the idea of an alphabet? Then every letter anyone ever writes or posts and makes a profit out of will have to pay me

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ming
Congrats Che... you are now thinking like a typical MS Upper Level Executive. I'm impressed

I can be evil and sneaky when I have to be. I've been playing Risk since I was ten.

I had a manager tell me he couldn't give me change for a dollar so I could make a phone call. So I bought a 15 cents piece of candy, then demanded a refund.

[MattH]

What happened to Asher?

[monolith94]

I've been playing risk since I was 7.

[Odin]

Originally posted by MattH
What happened to Asher?

Worshiping Bill Gates, as usual.

[JohnT]

Asher is apparently on a self-imposed vacation.

[yavoon]

whats taking asher?

[mrmitchell]

What? They've patented the concept of a plug in? What's next? And why isn't anyone else getting on this money train by trying to do something like patent the idea of an OS or media player?

[St Leo]

I guess the fact that Acrobat Reader is an external application for Opera is now a "feature" rather than a bungle.:P

Don't know how much Mozilla will be affected by this. Their extensions are somewhat different from normal plug-ins.

[Ted Striker]

Why don't you just relax and accept the FACT that Microsoft OWNS YOUR AZZEZZ!!!!!!!

STOP FIGHTING IT

YOU'RE ONLY MAKING YOUR LIFE HARDER ON YOURSELF!!!

[Urban Ranger]

I think this patent claim will eventually be thrown out on the basis of "too broad" and probably "not specific."

Maybe even like JPEG, that the patent has not been enforced before, so they cannot enforce it now.

I hate these so called "IP companies." They buy up bankrupted outfits with dubious patents, then throw lawsuits around trying to make a quick buck. Damn parasites

[Ted Striker]

The GIF patent is being enforced though

[Asher]

GIF expired.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Tell you how this could screw alternative broswers if this is held up. MS loses, then buys Eolas, and denies competitors the ablity to use the technology.

And jumps right back into more litigation? Not likely.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Asher
GIF expired.

When?

[Asher]

Few months ago.

[Ted Striker]

Yay!

Now I can save my GIF files on the Gimp!!!

NOT

[Gatekeeper]

If this keeps up, somebody's going to lay claim the the "idea" of the Internet in general and file a lawsuit. Yeah, yeah, it started in the 1960s as a government thing, but let's not let facts get in the way of a good lawsuit.

Frickin' gold diggers. Someone oughta cause a cave-in on their crappy little party.

Gatekeeper

[Ted Striker]

Al Gore already invented the internet

[laurentius]

Mozillah!

[C0ckney]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
Can I patent the idea of an alphabet? Then every letter anyone ever writes or posts and makes a profit out of will have to pay me

dunno if you heard about it but a couple of years back some cheeky bastards in russia managed to get away with patenting a feature that is common to all bottles (and as a result claimed about $4 billion), because the people at the russian patents deparment didn't undertand what the application was for