British Telecom has lost the opening round of a lawsuit that would have claimed patent rights over every hyperlink on every website - Yikes!

http://www.internetnews.com/.../article.php/1451731
(look - I'm infringing right now!!!)

And...what idiots are BT for thinking they 'own' hyperlinks?

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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Not really idiots....someone invented them, they didn't appear by magic, and they claim to have patented it.

Yeah..but they are just grasping on straws! The patents have run out in every country, except the USA, and because they are loosing money over here, they are trying to find other ways to exploit other companies, and get money out of stuff that has been going since before i was born!

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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If anyone wants to read more about this. It was first discussed on /. back in November:

http://slashdot.org/...sid=01/11/25/1413204

And the result of the court case was posted over a week ago now:

http://slashdot.org/...sid=02/08/22/2213208

- wil

I'm not denying that they are grasping at straws but if I were them I probably would have tried the same, but like the original article mentions, they weren't the first to create hyperlinks anyway, which I'm guessing is why they didn't win.

Maybe they weren't the first to use them, but they do hold the patent on them.

U.S. patent 4,873,662
http://164.195.100.11/...62&RS=PN/4873662

This post maybe explains it better:

http://slashdot.org/...8518&cid=4123660

Remember that this was:

- Only one test case against one ISP (Prodigy).
- They still hold the patent.

- wil

Yes I know, Watt's original article mentions that.

I think they don't stand much of a chance. I reckon it will be almost as difficult as proving the inventor of the F*** word.


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
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Or what came first, the chicken or the egg :)

The egg.


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
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Care to explain how?

*Ian thought nobody would ask*

Well, my explaination may offend either the scientific community or the religious community so I had best keep it to myself.

Since this is the internet technologies forum, how about this explaination:

Which came first, the server or the client?


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins

What is your definition of "client" ?

Well, I don't have a defn. But 'client' in the network sense I suppose.


http://www.iuni.com/...tware/web/index.html
Links Plugins

Well servers form the network so theres your answer :)

Looks to me BT is wasteing there money attacking Prodigy (or anybody, in that matter). It seems very clear to me that the patent has absolutely no bearing on modern Internet technology. Most importantly, hyperlinking is not done through a specialized keypad device for a proprietary text-based program to switch betwen data views as provided by a central computer.

sure, it sounds similar to the internet in idea, but not by any technical definition.

What are they expecting, anyway? Prodigy does not own the Internet. They don't own a copyright or patent on HTML, either, for that matter. Are they expecting them to pay a penny to them for every link found on every page a client views? Thats rediculous.

--Philip
Links 2.0 moderator