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?

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Texas Instruments Goes Legal On Calculator Hackers: How Dare You Make Our Product Better!

from the seriously? dept

I have to admit that I cannot remember where (perhaps it was in the comments on Techdirt?), but I recently saw a discussion among a few people discussing how odd it is that computers and mobile phones have advanced so much... but scientific calculators still are nearly identical as to what they were decades ago. The state of the art seems to have frozen somewhere in the 1980s. Perhaps it's because Texas Instruments, one of the major calulator makers out there, goes around threatening people who hack their calculators to run additional software on them. Apparently, the company is sending DMCA takedown notices to people who have posted code for running other software on their TI calculators. This is clearly against what the DMCA was designed to do, but is a consequence of the overly broad (and, frankly, ridiculous) anti-circumvention clause found in the DMCA.

This is a perfect example of how the DMCA is used by companies to prevent innovation, not to stop copying. Notice that there is no "copying" of any TI software going on here. It's just that in being able to run this software, apparently you need to bypass some protection measures that TI installed. Thus, TI claims, it's a circumvention and a violation of the DMCA. Of course, as the article (and various experts) note in the article, both the Copyright Office and the courts have often looked down on such blatant misuses of the DMCA, but for now the legal threats worked. The people contacted have removed the code.

Frankly, I can't fathom how this makes any sense at all for TI. Making its calculators more useful and interesting should only increase demand for the calculators. TI makes its money selling the physical product, not the software on the calculators. So what possible business rationale is there for stopping such hacking? It seems only sure to decrease the market, not increase it.

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Texas Instruments Denies Adam Savage's Story About Killing RFID Mythbusters Episode

from the he-said,-she-said dept

In a followup to the story about credit card company lawyers killing an episode of Mythbusters concerning RFID vulnerabilities, Daniel Terdiman got a response from Texas Instruments, who had organized the call that Mythbusters host Adam Savage had described. TI's spokesperson tells a somewhat different story:

"In June 2007, MythBusters was interested in pursuing some great myth-busting ideas for RFID. While in pursuit, they contacted Texas Instruments' RFID Systems, who is a pioneer of RFID and contactless technology, for technical help and understanding of RFID in the contactless payments space," TI spokesperson Cindy Huff said. "Some of the information that was needed to pursue the program required further support from the contactless payment companies as they construct their own proprietary systems for security to protect their customers. To move the process along, Texas Instruments coordinated a conversation with Smart Card Alliance (SCA) who invited MasterCard and Visa, on contactless payments to help MythBusters get the right information. Of the handful of people on the call, there were mostly product managers and only one contactless payment company's legal counsel member. Technical questions were asked and answered and we were to wait for MythBusters to let us know when they were planning on showing the segment. A few weeks later, Texas Instruments was told by MythBusters that the storyline had changed and they were pursuing a different angle which did not require our help."

This bit of he-said/she-said could actually be true from both ends, with each side having a rather different perception of the call in question. The folks on the call may have been a bit combative over certain issues, and that resulted in Discovery producers getting worried about the episode and "changing the storyline." Either way, if what Huff says is true, is Texas Instruments willing to get the credit card companies to publicly agree that Mythbusters and Discovery should move forward on a story about RFID vulnerabilities? Update: Now Savage is backing down and saying he got the facts of the story wrong...

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Wi-LAN Follows New Patent Hoarder Strategy: Sue Everyone All At Once

from the this-is-innovation? dept

Three and a half years ago, I wrote an article about the coming WiFi patent problem, focusing on the Canadian company Wi-LAN who claimed a bunch of patents related to WiFi technology. The company started off by suing Cisco. That lawsuit was eventually settled, but Wi-LAN clearly wasn't done yet. The company has now sued 22 different companies for violating its patents. This strategy seems to be the new strategy of patent holders: sue a ton of high profile companies all at once. It's what Sandisk did for example. Why is it becoming more popular? Because these patent holders are afraid that one of the potential targets might sue them first, seeking a declaratory judgment saying they don't infringe, and do so in a court other than the patent friendly court in Marshall, Texas. Oh yeah, Wi-LAN also notes that it's more economical to sue everyone at once. How nice of them.

Of course, Wi-LAN is hardly the only company that claims patents having to do with WiFi. It's a true patent thicket. If all these patents were actually valid and needed to be licensed no one could afford WiFi and it would be worthless. It's also worth noting that Wi-LAN's target list is somewhat ridiculous as well. It appears to be suing up and down the supply chain from chip suppliers like Broadcom and Intel to computer makers like Apple, Dell, Lenovo and Sony all the way to retailers like Best Buy and Circuit City. Assuming that all are somehow responsible for paying Wi-LAN the company could conceivably get license fees three or four times for the same computer. It's not hard to start adding up the questionable things going on here: (1) broad patents that are claimed to be important for a standard long after that standard has become widespread (2) these patents are one of many, many patents that claim to cover WiFi technology (3) filing the lawsuit against many companies at once (4) filing the lawsuit in east Texas and (5) filing the patents up and down the supply chain. This isn't what the patent system was designed to do and patent attorneys know it.

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