BT in court to enforce hyperlink patent

Scruff

Not sure if this is the right board, shure move it if it aint.

A rather worrying patent case being pursued by BT in the US.

From New Scientist

`BT Group PLC will appear in a New York federal court on Monday to try to enforce a patent it says covers all hyperlinking. BT claims it invented the hyperlink in 1976, and anyone who uses the World Wide Web owes them money.

If upheld, the patent would give BT the right to collect royalties from any Internet Service Provider.`

`"Is it good public policy to allow patents like this? I think this claim illustrates the problems you've got with the patent system," says James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, a Washington-based advocacy group. "They would have an exclusive right, the right to stop you cold from using the Web."`

hmm.......hope they don't win this one.

Lemming

didn't some company in the US also try something crazy like patenting the .com syntax?? Amazon or someone ??

dahamsta

Amazon succeeded in enforcing a claim on their 1-Click ordering system against Barnes & Noble. It was widely roasted in the tech media, and Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Bezos got into a relatively heated public debate about it (O'Reilly challenged Bezos with an open letter published on the O'Reilly website, and Bezos responded).

They didn't try and enforce the patent again, but it doesn't matter, they got what they wanted - they hamstrung bn.com just a little, and they got a rake of publicity. Some people are still boycotting Amazon, most notably the Free Software Foundation. RMS is a bit anal like that. If you play around with the search terms "amazon o'reilly patent 1-click bezos boycott" you'll get loads of info.

BT have a reasonably good chance of pulling this off if they really want to, but there's a lot of work involved and they'll be challenged left, right and center. I have a feeling it will end up with BT "donating" hyperlinking to the W3C (or equivalen) as a royalty free standard; that is if prior art isn't proven.

adam

peterd

I think all that lark all started back in around 2k.

The Post Office (which later split into the Post Office and BT) applied for the "Hidden Page" patent in 1976, granted in 1986. The hidden page (in this case, a web page) is "unveiled" via the use of hyperlink technology to it, hence their intellectual property right. They decided to only charge US ISP's for the use of *their* hyperlink technology. As per the *hyperlink* to the article, I doubt this will hold up.

dahamsta

Judge Dubious About Link Patent

Why This Link Patent Case Is Weak