How Eolas wants to enslave the WWW

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Everybody knows Microsoft, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo!, Apple and Google. But who has heard of a company called Eolas? That probably sounds rather like the main character of a fantasy movie, not like the name of a technology company. Nevertheless, the name Eolas will still have a threatening lingering sound in the ear of many high ranking Microsoft managers – in fact as a real threat.

In 2004 Microsoft was sentenced to pay 565 million dollars to Eolas. The reason: Eolas holds a patent, concerning almost every internet presence. The patent with the number 5,838,906 includes the principle, to open an application from a browser and a website via mouse click. Eolas applied for the patent in 1994 and it was granted in 1998. The problem about this: The principle of this patent is the main characteristic of the today’s WWW. If you would go without all functions, based on patent 906, the result would be a virtually static website.

The even bigger problem: Eolas seems to know that. After the victory over Microsoft, the company sues against 24 other big and liquid companies, for instance Amazon, Yahoo!, Google, Sun Microsystems, PepsiCo, Apple and YouTube. This might pay off for Eolas: 500 millions times 24 sued companies is 12 billions.

Tim Berners-Lee, often referred to as inventor of the World Wide Web, already tried to explain to the US patent authorities in 2003, which problems might result from patent 906, and that it might lead to a flood of lawsuits and to an increasing incompatibility of browsers, applications and websites, as every provider would try to get around this patent. However, all of his warnings remained unheard. During the six years that passed since then, patent 906 was over and over checked – and declared as valid. Last time in February 2009.

But let’s come back to Microsoft: The company filed an appeal in 2004, was however enervated by legal subtlety and finally agreed to an out-of-court payment of an unknown sum. The sum was probably not too small and obviously enough to pay an impressive dividend to the shareholders of Eolas.

Let’s have a closer look at the real problem of the patent: 1993, shortly after the release of the WWW protocol, the later Eolas founder Michael D. Doyle was said to have started to develop a browser that enabled to call programs out of websites. He is said to have applied for a patent of this in 1994 and was able to successfully demonstrate the defined functionality. Although no Eloas browser exists today, Doyle is referred to as the inventor of the mentioned principle. Particularly, Berners-Lee only described hyperlinks as an interface between addresses and documents on the web, other applications such as video, audio, flash etc. not taken into consideration.

Meanwhile, Doyle applied for an expansion of the original patent in 2002. This new patent should also have covered new applications – to Ajax, that was not defined before 2005. The new patent with the number 7,599,985 is also subject of the action of Eolas. To be specific, Eolas institutes an action due to the infringement of its patents and due to the non-payment of license fees. Eolas would prefer to see that every website operator and program developer, whose offers or products come under the Eolas patents, paid a yearly license payment to the company. The frightening prospect: This could become reality, as the American law allows patent registrations of basic ideas. Therefore, the law is on Eolas’ side.

Michael Doyle says: “We developed this technology more than 15 years ago and demonstrated it to the public, years before the market heard of applications that are integrated into websites, that tapped mighty resources via remote access. Profiting from inventions of others, without paying for them, is utterly unfair. We only want what we are due to get.”

Source: spiegel.de

UPDATE: Eolas is not planning to make the internet go down with the suits. This was assured to Focus by a lawyer of Eolas. They are not going to take action against individual bloggers or Facebook users, as this does not make economic sense.