Posted on 03/19/2002 3:34:47 PM PST by Naked Lunch
CORRECTED: NY Judge Narrows Terms in BT Internet Patent Case
Fri Mar 15,10:43 AM ET
By Eric Auchard
NEW YORK (Reuters) - An initial ruling by a U.S. judge has narrowed what British Telecom can say to prove its claim to have invented hyperlinking, in a high-profile case that could give BT rights to demand royalties on Internet use.
U.S. Federal Court for the Southern District of New York Judge Colleen McMahon issued an opinion from her White Plains, N.Y. court late on Wednesday that only partially accepted the wording of BT arguments that its 1970s patent should cover modern Internet linking methods.
While neither side was ready to declare outright victory on the strength of the judge's comments, the momentum appears to have swung to the defendants, who said they were now considering filing a motion for dismissal.
The judge cast doubt on the relevance of some of the patent's concepts to the decentralized network of computers now called the Internet, in an interpretation of arcane computing concepts that could be decisive in a jury trial.
BT's first target is Prodigy, the oldest online access service, which dates back to 1984 and is now a unit of SBC Communications , the second largest U.S. local telephone company. If successful, BT has said it is ready to try to force other U.S. Internet access providers to pay royalties on behalf of millions of subscribers.
"As has often been the case, BT's construction does not completely represent the claimed function, while Prodigy's proposal is overly complicated," the judge said in her ruling on how to interpret key terms in the case. A copy of the suit was provided to Reuters by one of the parties in the case.
BT Group Plc , as British Telecom is now known, believes it holds the patent covering "hypertext links" -- the illuminated text on a Web page that enables users to surf from page to page with the click of a mouse.
POTENTIAL TO DISMISS CASE
U.S. law requires trial courts to define in plain English any disputed terminology in the patent claim and to describe how the language of the patent applies to future inventions before such lawsuits can be tried before a citizen jury.
"She (Judge McMahon) identified a number of key terms on which she sided with us," said Drew DiNovo, one of a team of four attorneys with Houston-based Vinson & Elkins. DiNovo argued the preliminary case on behalf of Prodigy last month in McMahon's courthouse located 25 miles north of New York City.
"We feel these provide a pretty clear road map to guide us to summary judgement in the case," the litigator said.
The complications of patent law are made more difficult by thick technical jargon. Plaintiffs are asking the court to interpret computer concepts set down nearly 25 years ago, when personal computers, for example, had only just been invented.
A BT U.S. spokesman declined to comment on the court order.
The former British telecoms monopoly has maintained that Prodigy, with its 3.6 million customers, violates a hyperlink patent filed in 1977 and granted in 1989, before the commercial Internet as we know it even existed. (fixes date)
However, several legal experts said that BT's failure to assert its patent in the 13 years since the claim was officially granted means that it would likely forego any back payments even if it won the case. Under U.S. patent law revised in the 1990s, BT's patent stands to expire in 2006.
Already, the case has provoked howls from Internet gurus and computer programmers who argue that the inventions BT describes were detailed in work by British and U.S. inventors in the 1960s that have long ago entered the public domain.
Last month, Prodigy attorneys argued that British Telecom filed the patent 25 years ago with an eye to distribute information to subscribers over telephones or televisions connected to a central computer.
The idea of a highly decentralized network of computers -- the Internet -- was still a remote fantasy for all but a few academic researchers at the time, the attorneys argued.
McMahon's ruling challenged BT assertions that the "complete address" described in the patent was the equivalent of today's URL, or Universal Resource Locator, that holds the address of information stored on a remote computer.
The judge asked that any motions for summary judgement, or dismissal of the BT case, be made by Prodigy attorneys by April 13. A trial is scheduled for early September.
< click >
*poof*
LOL BT certainly have a lot of that! Active links have been around for a long time.
PS, the simplest and best definition of 'Chutzpah' I ever heard was from a Jewish friend who defined it thus: A man murders both his parents, then throws himself on the mercy of the court on the grounds that he's an orphan.
I wonder how much I can count on from some sympathetic twit of a judge and jury???
I also invented the english particles... a an and the. I am gonna be rich.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.