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Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Thu, Mar 25th 2004 8:46am





Do Feeble Arguments Justify PTO's Eolas Findings?

from the coulda-woulda-shoulda dept

theodp writes "In its Eolas Plug-In Patent Reexam Findings (pdf file), the USPTO finds the W3C-provided prior art flawed, but tosses in the 'teachings of Berners-Lee' (e.g., 'HTML browsers parse HTML'), the first 12 pages of a 1987 OO book (e.g., 'applying object oriented techniques to software makes the software more tolerant to change'), an article about rumored changes to circa-1993 X Windows, and a healthy dose of coulda-woulda-shoulda (e.g., 'it would have been obvious') to justify its conclusion that all ten of the patent's claims are meritless. While the decision may save Microsoft $521 million, it's too bad the USPTO had to resort to such feeble arguments (e.g., the 'teachings of Berners-Lee' were also cited in GRANTING the patent!) and vaporware. Documentation of successfully implemented prior art was readily available, but the W3C elected to disregard the public's input. "

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  1.  
    identicon
    Annoyed Person, Mar 25th, 2004 @ 2:09pm

    Let's Blame W3C for the USPTO ruling...

    So we blame the W3C because the USPTO decided to use a reason you don't like to reject the patents? Maybe I'm the only one that doesn't make sense to.
    The W3C challenged based on the data it chose to, anyone could have filed using any data they want.
    In short: Stop trying to bash W3C because they didn't do what you wanted them to.

     

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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