EOLAS ESCAPES REEXAM - WHAT'S NEXT FOR MICROSOFT? The USPTO has indicated on its public portal that the Examiner has prepared a Notice of Intent to Issue a Reexam Certificate as of yesterday. The document hasn't been made available for viewing yet, but it appears that Eolas convinced the Patent Office that the obviousness rejection under 35 USC 103 was improper.
Specifically, Eolas filed declarations from two of their experts (Robert J. Dolan and Edward W. Felten), along with supporting documents totaling 250+ pages, explaining that the references were not properly combinable to form the obviousness rejection. The Examiner bought their line of argumentation and is prepared to let the patent stand.
You can view the USPTO docket here.
More on the Eolas reexam at Dennis Crouch's Patently-O.
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
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The question is rather "What next for the Web"? As Tim Berners-Lee wrote in his letter to USPTOP, this patent gives control to a single one-man company of a critical piece of the Web infrastructure, which was free until now.
So what is next- a patent on a hyperlink? Or on displaying an image in the web page?
Another software patent helping the innovation!
The more important question is why did Microsoft, with more money than all banks put together,not license the Eolas patent? Were they abusing the patent process because Eolas is small ? Microsoft deserves to have the book thrown at them. The court did not award enough for this one. C'mon judge/jury, $500M is a bad tip for MS. Today, Microsoft would be an also-ran without this technology!!!
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