Eolas
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Template:Alternateuses Eolas is a United States research and development company and patent licensee. It was founded in 1994 by Dr. Michael David Doyle. His UCSF team created the first web browser that supported plug-ins. They demonstrated it at Xerox PARC, in November 1993, at the second Bay Area SIGWEB meeting.
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History
Eolas released an updated version of that browser, called WebRouser, in September 1995, for noncommercial use,[1] (http://www.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1995q3/0566.html) though the UCSF browser had been described on the HTML Working Group mailing list a year earlier [2] (http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/archives/HTML-WG/html-wg-94q3.messages/0059.html). The plug-in technology was later incorporated into Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browsers, as well as others.
Microsoft lawsuit
The company won a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft in summer 2003, after a five-week jury trial. Princeton professor Edward Felten testified that the patent was valid and that Microsoft infringed it with all of their versions of Windows from Windows 95 through all present versions.
Pei-Yuan Wei was Microsoft's star witness, but was discredited on the witness stand [3] (http://www.rkmc.com/pdf/ip_of_the_year.pdf), when it was demonstrated that the version of Viola that he asserted anticipated the Eolas patent was actually designed in such a way that it could not have ever worked over the Internet. Wei performed a demonstration of his software during the trial that purported to show it working over the Internet, but the demonstration was exposed as a fake when Wei was forced to admit on the stand that the relevant software had been modified shortly before the trial, even though he had earlier represented to the court that the software hadn't been changed since 1993. As damaging as the Wei testimony would have been to the defense if shown to the jury, the Judge nevertheless ruled the two exhibits relating to Wei's ViolaWWW software inadmissible, since he found that they could not be considered publications or public demonstrations under the patent law.
Dave Raggett testified for Microsoft at trial that his HTML+ specification anticipated the invention, but then admitted under cross examination that his proposed use of the EMBED tag was for the display of static non-interactive pictures in a web page. This point was driven home by Edward Felten, when he testified: "Q- Now, does the work that Mr. Raggett did with the embed text have any relationship to what the embed text is used for in the '906 patent? A- No, it's an entirely different thing. If you are looking for similarities between them, it doesn't go much beyond having the text called "embed." ... And so really what's happening here with HTML Plus is a slightly fancier way of putting static images into web pages. There's no interactivity here, and some of the other elements required in the '906 claims are also absent." Microsoft concluded their case with the testimony of their financial expert, Creighton Hoffman, who testified that MS Windows' Internet Explorer ActiveX technology should be considered worth only $3 million dollars. When pressed for the formula that he used to come up with that figure, he answered that it was his "best guess."
In his closing arguments, Eolas attorney Martin Lueck stated that the Eolas invention "allowed Microsoft to prevent the commoditization of the operating system. It allowed Microsoft to sell units of Windows. It allowed them to fend off the attack from Netscape to control the API...The damages number is large because Microsoft has made unprecedented use. You heard Mr. Nawrocki sit up here and say that in his 20 years of working in this field, it is the largest damages base he has ever seen. So as you consider what is reasonable, consider what's reasonable to Microsoft to continue to be able to use the '906 patent in its products beginning in November of 1998 so that it can continue to protect the healthy revenue streams and profit streams it's getting at $18 billion over three and a half years... Lastly, before I sit down, Microsoft will point to alternatives. I will simply tell you that as you look in this courtroom today, you will see that each and every one of the Windows products that have been sold since 1996 have Internet Explorer with them enabled with the full '906 technology. They haven't taken it off because they can't take it off."
The 12-person jury, which contained at least two engineers and a Web designer, returned a $521 million verdict for Eolas after less than one day of deliberation.
Microsoft had accused Dr. Doyle of witholding material information concerning ViolaWWW from the Patent Office. A few days after the jury verdict was returned, a short bench trial was held to deal with this accusation. The bench trial hinged on whether or not Doyle had ever had access to the two Pei Wei exhibits that the Judge had ruled inadmissible in the jury trial. In his findings of fact, Judge James Zagel summarized his findings with respect to those exhibits:
- "Doyle never had possession of the Viola code dated May 12, 1993 (earlier May code) or the Viola code dated May 27, 1993 (later May Code) nor any executable binary code asserted as prior art nor had he possession of any Viola source code or executable binary code dated from either 1993 or 1994.
- "Neither the earlier nor the later May codes were capable of executing the asserted prior art plotting demonstration in a system having at least one client work station and one network server coupled to said network environment, wherein said network environment is a distributed hypermedia environment.
- "Doyle never had possession of any Viola reference, paper or other publication of any sort dated in 1993 that described the functionality of Viola nor was he given any details of any May 1993 demonstration of Viola software, including: who was present, what was actually demonstrated, the actual software, the functionality of the software demonstrated or how that functionality was achieved."
With respect to Wei's claims regarding emails he had sent to Doyle in 1994 and 1995, the Judge stated:
- "In the end, even the resources of the defense could not make a passable case out of Wei’s claim to have invented the ‘906 patent. So I do not believe that Doyle made a tactical decision to forego disclosure because of the advantages of defending his invention after patent issued. He made the decision because he believed that Wei was full of hot air and he had nothing concrete to display to an Examiner. So I credit his testimony that he had no intent to deceive the Examiner. In this case, the Wei claim, as known to Doyle, was of limited materiality at best, and he had no intent to deceive."
Judge Zagel concluded by ruling that "The defendant has failed to prove that the inventors or assignees of the patent failed in their duty of candor in the patent prosecution before the United States PTO."
Several weeks later, Tim Berners-Lee wrote to US Patent Office Commissioner James E. Rogan, citing two Raggett references that had been exhibits at trial, because he felt the web was in danger [4] (http://www.w3.org/2003/10/27-rogan.html), but he misquoted one of the Raggett references and mischaracterized the features claimed in the patent. Rogan granted the reexam the day after Berners-Lee's request.
In the January, 2004 ruling [5] (http://www.eolas.com/Zagel-final-judgement-99c0626.pdf) that upheld the jury's verdict, Judge Zagel expressed skepticism concerning both Berners-Lee's motives and the justification for a re-examination by the US patent office.[6] (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/technology/02patents.html). Shortly afterward, Microsoft announced that it would not remove the plug-in technology from Windows while the case is being appealed [7] (http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20040130S0007).
See also
External links
- Eolas.com (http://www.eolas.com)