Re: FN-FORUM: how many pages will broken after this?

date posted 1st September 2003 16:50

On 01/09/2003 at 14:34 David Eckersall wrote:

>as matt edwards pointed out IE's only the first - they'll go after
>opera, mozilla, etc. soon enough.

However, such patents are currently unenforceable outside of the US, the=
patenting of software is something to be resisted and this is yet another=
example of why the EU should not extend patent law to cover algorithms. I=
haven't read the judgement but I'm a little surprised that they found in=
favour of EOLAS since there are a considerable number of prior uses to=
1993 of hyperlinking executable or scriptable components, Hypercard would=
be one and that was developed sometime in the mid-80's. The concept of a=
document containing separate and remote enities is intrinsic to the idea=
of SGML and that those document components may be rendered in a variety of=
ways.

The supposed patent was granted in 1998, scripts in HTML documents existed=
well prior to this, even so shortcuts were used in MS operating systems=
(which in patent terms is a hyperlink launching a script or executable).

That MS have said that there will only be a small change required for IE=
and that individual users will not be affected (though by this they may=
have meant the infringement of IPR), leads me to believe that this is not=
dependant upon a breach of some patent on a fundamental algorithm, such as=
launching a script, embedding or retrieving it via another document, but=
some specific knowing misuse of the same property from a contaminated=
source.

In any event it doesn't matter that the loser in this case is Microsoft,=
because the real loser is all of us because of this misuse of the Patent=
system.

S

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