Newsletter Discussion

Abstract

Michael Doyle, professor at the University of California and founder of Eolas Technologies Inc, introduced an Internet technology in the beginning of the 90's. He registered a patent on this technology, but it took four years till the process of registering the patent was finished. In the meantime, Microsoft used 'his' technology on the Internet Explorer. Doyle went to court and began a patent battle with Microsoft.

Doyle Patent

Michael Doyle, professor at the University of California and founder of Eolas Technologies Inc, introduced an internet technology in the beginning of the 90’s. The disputed technology allows surfers to use their browsers to launch programs such as plug-ins that play music and make web pages interactive. Patent Number 5,838,906 was granted to Eolas on November 17, 1998, and can be viewed on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Web site. The Patent describes in part ‘a system allowing a user of a browser program…to access and execute an embedded program object.’

Michael Doyle registered a patent on this technology, but it took four years till the process of registering the patent finished. In the meantime, Microsoft used ‘his’ technology on the Internet Explorer. That’s why Doyle went to court and began a patent battle with Microsoft. Microsoft had to pay more than 500 million $.

But at the beginning of March 2004, the U.S. Patent Office has invalidated the court’s decision. The ruling referenced the new prior art submitted by the Internet regulatory body W3C, including the draft specifications for HyperText Markup Language by Tim Berners-Lee and others, published in 1993, it also includes Dave Raggett’s specification HTML + Internet Draft from 1994 and a post by Dave Raggett to an internet news group around that time.

According to the U.S. Patent Office, Berners-Lee document showed a method for a browser to parse a document for HTML tags, including an embed tag.

Furthermore, they said the document illustrated an executable application external to the original Web page that the browser could cause to be executed on a client workstation.

The case is not over, Eolas having 60 days to appeal.

Experts say that the entire process could take 12 to 18 months.