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Microsoft Gets Some More Bad News About Eolas
from the back-to-the-lower-courts-it-is dept
Coming just a month after the patent office decided that Eolas' patent for plugins is valid, Microsoft can't be all that happy to hear that the Supreme Court won't review their appeal in the case that has them owing $500 million while also making browsers much less useful -- for an idea that certainly seems fairly obvious (embedding one program into another). The battle still needs to be reviewed by the district court, but the latest few moves haven't gone in Microsoft's favor. Considering that Microsoft was hoping to use the various prior art arguments in the lower case, the USPTO's findings last month may look particularly damaging. Again, it's quite hard to see what Eolas has done that deserves them getting half a billion dollars.
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Microsoft actually WANTS to lose this
It forces the browser to be a *single binary* rather than a container for plugins. That means Microsoft will get to dictate what they build into IE, and have a convenient excuse. Flash? Sorry. Java VM? Sorry.
It also provides a huge I.P. threat to Firefox and other browsers, by essentially trashing their ability to embed plugins as well.
The fact that cinema and backroom shinanigans can go on like this in the US without government intervention speaks to the corruption in our government at the moment. Sad!!
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Re: Microsoft actually WANTS to lose this
While it is true that Microsoft could potentially benefit from an all out patent battle where the best lawyers controlled the software industry, I honestly don't believe that they want to play the patent game. I never see them going after other companies for violating a patent, but I have no doubt that this will change. They are essentially being forced into the patent business and as a result, I fear things are only going to get worse in the future. Sadly, if MS would have started building an extensive patent library back in the 90s, they could probably be forcing most of their competitors out of business by now. And how will these patents affect open source initiatives?
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Re: Microsoft actually WANTS to lose this
I think maybe today, by sheer numbers, more citizens are affected by internet usage than all of the other issues, yet we rarely know where our elected reps stand on the future of internet regulation, taxation, censorship, fees, hardware and software development rights, etc.
Also, I think we need to create a specialized area of legal expertise to handle these issues, as so many current attorneys and judges seem to have only the faintest idea of what truly matters and what is best in the public interest.
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Microsoft doesn't owe them
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Re: Microsoft doesn't owe them
It was not as simple as you think. In March 2005: "Both sides claimed victory in the mixed ruling, which reversed part of the lower-court ruling, affirmed other parts of it, vacated the decision as a whole and sent it back for a new trial." The current case follows on from that.
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