Eolas is suing some of the internet's biggest names, including
Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Sun Microsystems, Apple, eBay and Amazon
over its claims that those companies violate its patents.
The patents in question enable the operation of interactive
technologies that are embedded in web pages, according to a
statement from Eolas.
"The [5,838,906] Patent embodies technology first demonstrated
publicly in 1993, enabling Web browsers for the first time to act
as platforms for fully-interactive embedded applications," said
Eolas. "This advanced browser technology provides rich interactive
online experiences for more than a billion Web users worldwide. The
Patent Office granted the '906 Patent in November 1998.
"The [7,599,985] Patent is a continuation of the '906 patent,
and allows websites to add fully-interactive embedded applications
to their online offerings through the use of plug-in and AJAX
(asynchronous JavaScript and XML) web development techniques," it
said.
The '906 patent was the basis of Eolas's suit against Microsoft
which was won initially by Eolas, appealed by Microsoft and
eventually settled in 2007 in an agreement between the companies
whose terms were undisclosed.
"The USPTO has affirmed the validity of the '906 Patent in three
separate proceedings, including two patent reexaminations, the most
recent of which concluded in February 2009," said Eolas in a
statement.
Eolas now claims that 23 other companies are infringing its
patents. Its suit says that it believes that the companies are
making available "web pages and content to be interactively
presented in browsers, including,without limitation, the web pages
and content accessible via [various addresses] and maintained on
servers located in and/or accessible from the United States under
the control of [the companies…and] software, including, without
limitation, software that allows content to be interactively
presented in and/or served to browsers" without authority.
The suit names as technologies that infringe the patent Adobe's
Flash and Shockwave; Apple's Quicktime and Safari; and Sun
Microsystems' Java.
"What distinguishes this case from most patent suits is that so
many established companies named as defendants are infringing a
patent that has been ruled valid by the Patent Office on three
occasions," said Eolas lead counsel Mike McKool.
The company's chairman Michael Doyle said that Eolas was the
first to invent and demonstrate the technologies made possible by
its patents.
"We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and
demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of
interactive applications embedded in web pages tapping into
powerful remote resources," he said. "Profiting from someone else's
innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is
what's fair."
The '906 patent is entitled 'Distributed hypermedia method for
automatically invoking external application providing interaction
and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document'. The
'985 patent is entitled 'Distributed hypermedia method and system
for automatically invoking external application providing
interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia
document'.
The full list of companies sued is: Adobe; Amazo; Apple; Argosy
Publishing; Blockbuster; CDW; Citigroup; eBay; Frito-Lay; Go Daddy;
Google; J.C. Penney; JPMorgan Chase & Co; New Frontier Media;
Office Depot; Perot Systems Corp; Playboy Enterprises;
Rent-A-Center; Staples; Sun Microsystems; Texas Instruments;
Yahoo!; and YouTube.
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