Eolas Is Baaaaaaaaack; And It's Suing Everyone Over Embeddable Web Widgets

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Eolas Is Baaaaaaaaack; And It's Suing Everyone Over Embeddable Web Widgets

from the because-otherwise... dept

Well, here we go again. As you may recall, Eolas is a company that claimed to hold a patent (5,838,906) on browser plugins. The company sued Microsoft, and a long drawn-out battle ensued. Even though web inventor Tim Berners-Lee presented prior art and asked the USPTO to invalidate Eolas' ridiculously broad and obvious patent, the USPTO eventually upheld the patent (after initially rejecting claims). Even as Microsoft began presenting evidence that it actually had made use of the technology in question before Eolas applied for its patent, losses in the courts and the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case eventually resulted in Microsoft agreeing to settle rather than continue to fight.

Since then (two years ago), plenty of people have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, concerning Eolas' plans to sue others. Now we know why it waited. It's now received a new patent -- a continuation patent, which is often used to abuse the patent system by putting forth a broad patent, then filing for continuations to make changes that let an earlier "invention" cover technologies that later become popular. In this case, the new patent (7,599,985), which basically just extends the earlier patent on browser plugins, and extends it to javascript widgets. Yes, those embeddable widgets used all over the web? It appears that Eolas thinks that those are infringing and everyone should pay up.

The new lawsuit has been filed against Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, Go Daddy, Google, J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase, Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises, Staples, Sun, Texas Instruments, Yahoo, and YouTube. Apparently, starting small isn't part of the plan. Not surprisingly, Eolas filed in Eastern Texas using McKool Smith -- one of the most popular law firms representing patent holding firms in East Texas.

I am honestly curious how patent system defenders, who are also programmers, can defend this. I'm sure non-programmers will claim that the patent is valid, but I can't imagine how anyone who has any knowledge of basic programming principles can claim that such a patent is valid. In the meantime, tons of companies doing an incredibly basic thing on the web will now have to waste millions of dollars fighting a ridiculous patent lawsuit. How is this promoting innovation in any way shape or form?

Legal Issues

Wed, Aug 5th 2009 8:30am

Filed Under:
dafamation, section 230

Companies:
godaddy, ning, twitter, wordpress

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Twitter, WordPress, Ning & GoDaddy All Sued In Mistargeted Lawsuit Over Defamation

from the someone-please-learn-section-230 dept

Last week, a lawsuit involving an allegedly defamatory Twitter message about a landlord made the news. This week, we've got another defamation suit involving another Twitter message and a condo building, but the situation here is quite different. First, if the alleged facts are true, it does sound like it could be defamation. It involves some condo owners, and who used Twitter, blogs and other websites to apparently accuse the condo board president of a variety of things including "murder, bribery, extortion, illicit payoffs, and corruption." Assuming those things are untrue, it would appear that the guy targeted by all this, Daniel Neiditch, has a decent defamation claim.

However, rather than just sue those folks responsible for the message, Neiditch's lawyers appear to have sued pretty much every company that these messages could loosely be associated with, including Twitter, WordPress, Ning, and GoDaddy. As Sam Bayard notes in the link, it appears that Neiditch's lawyers appear not to know about Section 230 of the CDA. That's a pretty big one for your lawyers to miss when filing a lawsuit like this. Ultimately, all four of those companies should have the case easily dismissed under Section 230, but it will be a waste of time and money in the meantime.

Of course, even if they were totally unaware of Section 230, basic common sense should tell you that these sites, hosting the content (or the domain, in the case of GoDaddy) should never be responsible for what was written on those sites. Going after them as a part of the lawsuit appears to be a blatant money grab, by trying to tie any company to the lawsuit, no matter how ridiculous the connection is between the actual action and the company. There really ought to be sanctions against lawyers who do such things, because it happens way too often.

News You Could Do Without

Mon, Jul 6th 2009 4:19pm

Filed Under:
brad feld, domain names, equity, patent, patent application

Companies:
godaddy

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Why Would Selling Equity In A Domain Name Deserve A Patent?

from the isn't-selling-equity-selling-equity? dept

Brad Feld, one of the increasing number of VCs who's grown skeptical of the value of patents (software patents in particular) alerts us that domain registrar GoDaddy has apparently applied for a patent on selling shares of equity in a domain name. You can see the application itself, which only has six claims and seems pretty straightforward. It's only an application, so there's still a decent chance this gets rejected -- but the very fact that anyone even thought it was worth applying for such a patent is quite telling. It's difficult to see what is new or unique about what's in the patent, other than it applies the standard process of selling equity in anything to a domain name.

Rumors, Conspiracies, etc.

Mon, Jun 30th 2008 12:45pm

Filed Under:
auctions, conflict of interest, domains

Companies:
godaddy

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Is A GoDaddy VP Bidding Against Customers In Domain Auctions?

from the very-questionable-if-true dept

Slashdot is running an interesting post, suggesting that GoDaddy's VP in charge of managing the domain auctions it runs on expired domains, has been caught participating in the auctions himself, often driving up the prices of those auctions for customers. That's one way to pump up those revenue numbers. If this is shown to be true, it seems incredibly questionable.

(Mis)Uses of Technology

Wed, Mar 12th 2008 6:21am

Filed Under:
shut down, websites

Companies:
godaddy, ratemycop

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GoDaddy Shuts Down RateMyCop; Gives Conflicting Reasons Why

from the perhaps-because-there's-no-good-reason dept

On Monday, Tim wrote about the pointless controversy around the site RateMyCop.com, which would allow people to rate police officers they had dealings with. Considering how many similar sites there are for teachers, doctors, restaurants, etc. -- combined with the dangers that come with police abusing the power they are given -- a site to rate police officers seems quite reasonable. But, of course, many police officers didn't see it that way. However, what no one expected is that the site's registrar and host would step into the fight and take the site completely offline with no warning to its owner. Yesterday, GoDaddy pulled the entire site offline, and replaced it with a page telling the owner to call GoDaddy (even though they had his phone number). People at GoDaddy gave conflicting reports as to why the site was taken offline, first claiming it was taken offline for "suspicious activity" and later that he had surpassed a 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, which the owner of the site disputes, saying there weren't nearly enough page views for that to happen. Either way, he's now ditched GoDaddy and found a host that won't pull the site offline with no warning and no recourse.

Culture

Wed, Aug 22nd 2007 10:44pm

Filed Under:
baby names, domain names

Companies:
godaddy