(no subject)

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

I would like to start a conversation on property rights. We have had some strange issues involving the rote concept of ownership; of the right to own and to assign value to things or places.

Seeds, genes, creative efforts, everything but the air we breathe can or has been claimed by someone/government as being 'owned by X'

Some things seem to generic, to much commonplace, to 'everyone uses it!' like, oh, some of the most common features of the World Wide Web.

Or is it?

There is some deep shit going down in Texas.

Michael Doyle, a low-profile Chicago biologist, claims that it was actually he and two co-inventors who invented — and patented — the “interactive web” before anyone else, while they were employed by the University of California back in 1993. Doyle argues that a program he created at the UC’s San Francisco campus, which allowed doctors to view embryos over the nascent World Wide Web, was the first program that allowed users to interact with images inside of a web browser window.

Feel free to read the story, it takes about 5 minutes.

Clearly, if the facts are correct as presented, Doyle is about to become an extremely wealthy man, benefiting off the work of others. That he has waited so long to file the actions is pretty smart on his part, the bigger Google and Yahoo get, the deeper their pockets are. Ultimately, it is all paper wealth, shifted from one account to the next but there is this nagging idea that he really didn't earn this money.

Today, Doyle and his lawyers say he’s owed royalty payments for the use of a stunning array of modern web technologies. Watching online video, having a “search suggestion” pop up in a search bar, or even rotating an image of a sweater you might want to buy on an online shopping site — all are said to infringe on the idea-space of Doyle and his company, Eolas Technologies.

To those who follow high-profile tech litigation, the name Eolas may sound familiar. The company sued Microsoft back in 1999, winning a $521 million jury verdict in 2003 that shook the tech world. While that verdict was overturned on appeal, Microsoft ultimately settled rather than re-try the case. The full settlement amount wasn’t disclosed, but the University of California revealed that its cut was $30.4 million; since an Eolas lawyer at one point described UC’s take as 25 percent, minus expenses, it suggests the company got well over $100 million from that case.

The Microsoft verdict got the attention of tech community in a big way. Eolas was denounced in some quarters as a “patent troll” — the company has never launched its own web browser, or any commercially successful technology that’s well known, for that matter.

This is about as big a case of property rights as it gets. The fact he has pursued this, and the players have fought him over this since 1993 pretty much settles any question of "Patent Troll". If you were on the jury and only had the info provided in the links and the story, which side would prevail? My opinion would be I would fall on the side with the best argument as to the validity of the patents. That the PTO reversed its decision and affirmed the validity, I am Sure UC/Eolas will point this out to the jury.