Friday, September 12, 2003
Plug-in Patents
Ray has posted an in depth description of a recent project to demonstrate prior art regarding a lawsuit against Microsoft. Using VMWare he was able to create a pre-1994 environment with Windows 3.11, Notes 3.0 and Excel 5.0. The story details how Notes is in essence a browser:
I haven't fully grocked the nature of the patent, but it does seem harsh. Things like Flash and Acrobat would not be allowed to function as they do today - a seemless integration in the browser. A good friend of mine used to do patent litigation and it seems exceedingly difficult to understand all the nuances. I was also involved in filing patents for some of my technology, not so that we could sue anyone, but so that nobody could come along later and sue us! How sad.
"I am quite embarassed to say that we frankly didn’t “get” what was so innovative about this newfangled “Web” thing, given the capabilities of what had already been built."
I haven't fully grocked the nature of the patent, but it does seem harsh. Things like Flash and Acrobat would not be allowed to function as they do today - a seemless integration in the browser. A good friend of mine used to do patent litigation and it seems exceedingly difficult to understand all the nuances. I was also involved in filing patents for some of my technology, not so that we could sue anyone, but so that nobody could come along later and sue us! How sad.
