Texas Jury Strikes Down Patent Troll's Claim To Own The Interactive Web

Wired:

After threatening web companies for more than a decade, Michael Doyle and his patent-holding company Eolas Technologies -- named after the Irish word for knowledge -- may be finished.

An eight-member federal jury in East Texas deliberated Thursday for just a few hours before concluding that all of Eolas' asserted claims of ownership to technology allowing access to the interactive web were invalid.

Read the whole story: Wired

Comments

[gaubladt]

08:02 PM on 02/10/2012

On the subject of patent trolls: Up until the reform of patent laws in the 90's by corporate schills, patent trolls were kept at bay by the original patent laws that prohibited patents based on common knowledge/practice. Patent trolls can be seen as the demon spawn of the unholy conjugation between the corporate caste and our political caste.

[Maxedaddy]

07:13 PM on 02/10/2012

Patents are only good if they don't affect the government or big corporations. The people that own this patent do have ownership of the web but our government wont ever let them collect on their dues. It's too much power for one person and our government will unjustly stop a person or anyone who tries to have control over such a powerful subject. Look at Dr. Burzynski. That man has created a possible cure and treatment that actually works for cancer but our government wont let it go on because its too much power for one person to own the cure for cancer. That is a Trillion dollar industry and the U.S. will not cut off its financial cow (Cancer Treatment) by giving this Dr. rights over his own discovery. He owns the patent but isn't allowed to use it because Pharma and the FDA won't allow proper clinical trials. Everytime they've taken him to court and lost, people and the U.S. Government file for his patents. Incredible!

[flagboy]

06:51 PM on 02/11/2012

er, no... the interactive web patent was struck down because the court heard evidence that the idea in the patent was well known and implemented BEFORE THE PATENT HAD BEEN FILED. That's the point of patents: they have to be for actual *inventions*, i.e. for something that is not obvious and no-one has ever done it before. It's not just about getting a payout becuase you happen to have registered it with a government agency.

[Maxedaddy]

12:27 AM on 02/12/2012

Wrong. Pattents are for intellectual property rights. First come first serve. If you don't file for your idea first and somebody else does, you are screwed.

[flagboy]

08:58 AM on 02/12/2012

also I do not understand why you have brought up the case of Stanislaw Burzynski. I didn't know about this matter, but was quickly able to determine that it has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of patents on his work: the FDA has not approved his products because they think he's a quack, and so do a lot of other people.

[Maxedaddy]

01:13 PM on 02/12/2012

Your regurgitated rhetoric sounds good and all but maybe you should do your homework before you speak. Pose a question, if he was such a quack, why would the government and Pharma be trying to apply for his patents that he already has every time they've brought him to court? Why would the government and his previous assistant try and apply for patents that Burzynski already has patents on? Is it because he's a quack? Why not watch his documentary all the way through, so you can grasp what our goverment is really about.

[SangZe]

05:58 PM on 02/10/2012

A rational decision out of Texas? Must be a mistake. The whole patent/copyright thing is in serious need of reform. Authors/musicians are not the ones benefiting under current laws. Others are. When someone sues for use of quotes from Shakespeare play taken from the "First Folio," something is wrong. When someone lays claim to a folksong that predates the law, something is wrong. When publishers charge $50.00 for a book and the author gets $1.00, something is very wrong. The whole system does not favor the artist.

[imonlyhereforthelaughs]

03:56 PM on 02/10/2012

Silly...doesn't he know Al Gore invented the internet?

[ProgressivesWin]

02:24 PM on 02/10/2012

I know SOMEBODY'S lawyers aren't happy right now. Think of the millions those guys pored into trying to wn this case for Doyle. The money from royalties would be incalculable. Reminds me of somethin John Grisham would write.

[olafTheAwesome]

01:57 PM on 02/10/2012

Let's burn all patent trolls at the stake.

[MichaelMcKLA]

11:59 PM on 02/10/2012

I second that motion.

[Sundialsvc4]

11:01 AM on 02/10/2012

Do we seriously need any more examples of the urgent need to utterly reform Patents in this country?

These documents are prima-facie evidence that some beleaguered patent examiner probably never even took the time to look at what was in front of him or her, before reaching for that rubber stamp. (And, with literally thousands of new applications arriving literally every day, who's to blame them?)

Maybe we need to use this technology that's in front of us all now, to implement a patent system that is based upon peer review. A patent is valid only if a preponderance of volunteer reviewers, chosen from experts in the field (and chosen somewhat "by lot") reach the consensus that the application truly does meet the requirements of the original concept for a patent: that the idea is new, is useful, and is not obvious to a learned practitioner in the field."

A patent examiner cannot reasonably be expected to make such a judgment call. What we are right now expecting of them is, simply, impossible.