"If he has some altruistic motives here, I think it's time to step forward and describe them in more detail," one technologist for an IE competitor said. "Instead, his lawyers have said that everyone in the browser business should talk to them about getting a licence. Maybe something good can come of this, but all in all, it's a very frustrating way to be saved."
Doyle counters that he wants only to correct Microsoft's misdeeds and liberate the masses from the oppression of Bill Gates' vast empire. "We, because of this legal victory, will be able to reinstate a whole new area for competitive development in the software industry. The developers and the competing entities out there to Microsoft, I think, will come to find that we are more of a friend than a threat," he said.
Microsoft might still pull out a victory at the appellate level. Moreover, even if Eolas' patent is upheld, the rest of the software industry may very well go with Microsoft's workarounds rather than face the prospect of abandoning development for the universally distributed IE.
Filed in 1999, the Eolas case drew international attention last month, when a US District Court ruled that Microsoft's IE browser violated Eolas' Patent No. 5,838,906. The patent, filed on 17 October, 1994, and granted 17 November, 1998, covers a system that launches an application within a Web page.
The jury found that IE infringed on the patent through its inclusion of Microsoft's ActiveX technology, which Web authors use to launch and run plug-in applications such as Java applets, Adobe Acrobat documents and Macromedia Flash movies. Without ActiveX, the Microsoft browser would be unable to fully render a significant proportion of pages on the Web as well as on many corporate intranets.
This is why Doyle says his suit, if successful, will right many wrongs Microsoft inflicted in crushing upstart browser rival Netscape Communications. When Netscape launched in 1994, its founders saw the Web browser as a potential end run around the Windows juggernaut. Rather than having to code applications to work with Windows, the computing world could write to the open standard of the Web, Netscape and its investors reasoned -- and the operating system would therefore be reduced to a mere commodity from a multibillion-dollar, Microsoft-controlled toll booth.
Talkback
Although I see this as a tradegy for the web the truth of the matter is that if MS could have had that patent first they would have.
Also, after all the wranglings of MS's patent-everything we-can strategy interfering with innovation such as web services it serves them a good strong lesson IMHO
Give the patent to the W3C.
In my honest opinion, Doyle should give up the lawsuit and GIVE the patent to the W3C.
The reality is that he's not just hurting Microsoft - he's hurting all the companies that develop rich interactive content, and therefore all the users of the internet.
As for his claim that he is righting the wrongs against Netscape... sorry, but I have no sympathy there.
As a user of the internet, I really don't want to have to buy a browser to go surf (and just think of all the costs that would have been necessary to buy browser upgrades each time a new innovation in the technology came along).
And as a web developer, I really don't like having to jump through the hoops of developing content that works properly on all browsers. The fact that IE has more or less become a standard makes my life easier.
The truth is that Netscape missed one very basic important fact. The business model that works in this case shows that the 'cash cow' isn't the browser - the money is in the tools that are used to develop the content, and also in some cases, the content itself.
Other examples can be cited to demonstrate this model in action: Microsoft Word is used to create rich word-processed documents, and as such you have to pay for it, BUT, you can get (for free) the MS Word Viewer to look at documents. And I'm sure that everyone can think of other examples.
As for the patent itself - I'm actually amazed that it was granted in the first place; after all, displaying the output of an application in a viewport of another application is not a new idea (and wasn't then). Here's a thought - what about when you embed a browser window in a Word Document :-)
So come on Doyle... give us a break and don't hurt the innovation and development of the Internet. Undo your unjust action and give the patent to the W3C.