Eolas Update: Chicago-based Eolas Inc. holds a license to the patent, No. 5,838,906, from the University of California at Berkeley. Last year, it won a $521 million jury verdict against Microsoft Corp. in its patent-infringement case. Microsoft has since appealed the verdict.
According to patent office spokeswoman Brigid Quinn, Eolas on Monday was mailed an "office action" on the re-examination of the disputed patent. A number of online reports said the patent office examiner decided to reject the 10 claims presented by Eolas.

But Eolas attorney Martin Lueck, of Minneapolis-based Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP, said the examiner had accepted a number of Eolas' arguments and had withdrawn his previous finding from February.

Lueck said the patent office examiner had issued a new action—based on yet another piece of "prior art"—to reject the patent's claims. The prior-art piece was outside the examples offered by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), which brought the prior-art question to the attention of the patent office in November 2003.