Furdlog points to this news.com article about a preliminary decision of the patent office to invalidate the illegally granted harmful and obnoxious Eolas patent.
As I have pointed out before, the W3C does have some influence to defend the Internet against the most damaging patents.
And invalidating this kind of claim is the only way the patent system as such can survive. If the patent office lets patents like the Eolas patent stand and cripples the Internet in the process, we will see a strong patent abolition movement, since everybody understands that there is no justification for ownership in the concept of a browser plug-in, but most people don't know and don't care about the positive effects of patents in other fields.
Patent attorneys ignore the danger of overextending the system at their own peril. They should be the loudest voices calling for meaningful restrictions, instead of betting everything on unlimited patent inflation.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at March 6, 2004 04:21 PM | TrackBack