Blawg Review #28 is up and running at J. Craig Williams’ blog site May It Please The Court. There were a number of blog sites mentioned we haven’t seen before.
We particularly enjoyed reading about the USPTO’s decision in the Eolas matter finding the patent of Eolas’ web browsing technology valid and will issue a re-examination certificate of the patent first challenged by Microsoft Corp. two years ago. Steve Murphy’s Lawyers and Business Executives in the News highlights the significance that this brings to Microsoft.
Earlier, Eolas sued Microsoft, alleging that Microsoft had infringed on their patent by including Eolas technology in their web browser. In the jury trial against Microsoft, Eolas was awarded $521 million in damages as the jury found that Microsoft infringed on the patent. Microsoft then claimed that the patent was invalid since another similar technology was available to the public in 1993.
U.S. Patent No. 5,838,906 (the ‘906 patent) was first issued to the University of California on Nov. 17, 1998. Reexamination of the patent was initiated by the PTO director in October 2003 after Microsoft was found liable for patent infringement in a lawsuit brought by UC and Eolas Technologies Inc., the company to whom UC exclusively licensed the ‘906 patent.
In its Reasons for Patentability/Confirmation notice, the patent examiner rejected the arguments for invalidating UC’s previously approved patent claims for the web-browser technology as well as the evidence presented to suggest that the technology had been developed prior to the UC innovation. The examiner considered the Viola reference – the primary reference asserted by Microsoft at trial – and found that Viola does “not teach nor fairly suggest that instant ‘906 invention, as claimed.”
