[Updated] Father of the Internet in court to once more protect the Internet from trolls
I remember back in 2009 when the news about the lawsuit being launched by a company called Eolas was looking to basically take the Internet hostage because of some extremely over broad patent that was based on yet some other patent that was just as broad. Well it seems t hat they are back in the news because the judge in the case decided to let the matter go to trial and Eolas still continues to want a $600 million from the companies named in the suit.
It turns out that the lawyers fight against Eolas’ claims called Tim Berners-Lee to testify before the court about how the claims being made by Eolas are just plain ridiculous and that the patents should be tossed out because of the vast amount of prior art. As well Berners-Lee didn’t mince his world when he told the court that these patents could be a serious threat to the web and they were issues that technologists had been working on long before Eolas came along.
I sure hope that unlike past tech lawsuits in the Texas courts the judge in this case will see the lawsuit for the pile of steaming crap that it is and throw the whole thing out of court and give Eolas a good legal slap upside the head.
Update: According to a post just up at Ars Technica the East Texas court has ruled that the key patent that is acting as the foundation for Eolas’ lawsuit has been declared invalid which means that Eolas is sh!t out of luck. Finally some sense from the courts.
via Techdirt
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About the Author
Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).
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