Patents Gone Wild

SBC Communications sent this letter to protect it’s “links on left side of page that navigate within frames” patent violation error.

What a crock!

I am glad I moved my links to the top. Sheesh.

What is next people???

2 comments

  1. Someone needs to give those @$$h073 lawyers a cold bath.

    The patent is effective Aug. 3, 1999. So, I guess they never saw this prior art, tho everyone working in the field at the time used these references:

    Netscape JavaScript Guide. Look at the bottom of the navigation frame (you know, the patent-infringing one 😉 for the notice “Copyright © 1995-1996 Netscape Communications Corporation”

    http://wp.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/3.0/handbook/javascript/index.html

    HTML reference. At the top of the index page appears this notice: “…This book was posted on 11/19/97. This tag reference replaces the previous HTML Reference Guide.

    http://developer.netscape.com/docs/manuals/htmlguid/index.html Last updated: 1/26/98.”

    These tools are in the same form they were in when I used them in the mid-90s. The patent wants to cover functionality that’s specifically what the tag was designed to do.

    The patent can be found at http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,933,841.WKU.&OS=PN/5,933,841&RS=PN/5,933,841

    I don’t see the section listing prior art, nor can I view the images 🙁

  2. It looks to me (without mulling over the entire set of docs) that they own the patent for a ‘browser’ which renders pages in such a manner. I would suggest that they sue whomever built the browser (their wording) which allows such an arrangement of pages to display. It would be simple in court to show this NOT happening by using a browser that does not support frames. 😉

    I hope this gets taken to court… this isn’t that same guy who sued over retail web sites (claiming patent on electronic ordering)?

    Anyway, like Val said, there’s mounds of prior art out there.

    M

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