EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent

Posted Nov 16, 2007 16:13 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167)
In reply to: EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent by mjthayer
Parent article: EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent

Do you think there's a likelihood of success with MPEG ? My impression is that the breadth and
depth of the patents in that portfolio is quite substantial. Having just one of those patents
struck doesn't change anything except perhaps the way your money is distributed between the
members of the licensing organisation. So it's either a token project or you have to collect
solid prior art for every aspect that's patented. I think this is unlikely.

The biggest difference as I understand it though is that some of the essential work to develop
MPEG was done by the owners of the patents, indeed part of the process was to obtain the
agreement that all the relevant patents would be licensed on RAND terms (which was the most
you could have expected at that time). In contrast the owner of this "sub-domain" patent
simply patented an idea other people were already using, and which was obvious to anyone with
relevant knowledge. So this is a fight we can expect to win.

EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent

Posted Nov 16, 2007 16:31 UTC (Fri) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (1 responses)

Probably not indeed.  It would be really interesting though if someone tried to collect as
much prior art as possible on a public website.  I have heard claims that prior art exists for
all of the mpeg patents, and would be interested to know whether that is really the case.

EFF Wins Reexamination of Internet Subdomain Patent

Posted Nov 17, 2007 4:18 UTC (Sat) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

Sure, there's prior art that's likely to affect some of the patents. But you'd have to bust every claim of every patent, and that's unlikely to succeed.