Company Claims Modern Day Internet Ownership, Files Patent Lawsuit

Tyler, Texas is known as the “patent troll” base of operations for patent company’s looking to make money off intellectual property rights and this week the city was handed a crazy case in which Eolas Technologies claims that it’s patent for the “interactive web” which was filed in 1993 gives the company control of pretty much every aspect of the internet we use today.

In 1993 the company filed a patent for a program that would allow doctors to view embryos using images inside a web browser. The company claims that under its patent websites must pay for everything from streaming videos to “suggest” features on the web.

In the meantime the true founders of the world wide web, namely the “web’s father” Tim Berners-Lee have called for an end to the ridiculous lawsuit. Berners testified yesterday that patent suits such as this one could endanger the future of the online innovation.

While the case may seem ridiculous on it’s surface (and it is), Eolas sued Microsoft in 2007 for a very large chunk of cash and judges in East Texas tend to play right into the hands of patent trolls.

For some reason I don’t think a single company is going to get away with upholding such a ridiculous case. I remember uploading images to bulletin board systems in the early 1990’s, well before Eolas decided to patent pictures inside of “browsers” which for all intensive purposes existed on BBS systems will before the company’s 1993 patent.

The case does however bring up an interesting point about the state of patent laws in the United States where simply stating the words “interactive web” in a document 19 years ago can lead a patent troll to file a lawsuit about technology that has greatly improved since that time.

Do you think Eolas is about to spend a lot of money to ultimately lose a patent battle?

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Tags: Internet, Internet Ownership, Patent Lawsuit, Patents

About the Author

James Johnson James is a new media professional with more than half a decade worth of experience in the online writing space. He currently serves as the Associate Editor of Inquisitr.com and the Editor-in-Chief of SocialNewsDaily.com. He also serves as a resident writer for Splash Press Media. In his spare time James consults businesses regarding SEO and Content Development.