Why the Patent System Doesn't Play Well with Software: If Eolas Went the Other Way

Everyone take a deep breath: it seems we've had a moment of sanity in the patent wars. Last week, a jury invalidated the dangerous Eolas patents, which their owner claimed covered, well, essentially the whole Internet.

The patents were originally granted for an invention that helped doctors to view images of embryos over the early web. A few years later, smelling quick cash, their owner insisted that it had a veto right on any mechanism used to embed an object in a web document. Really? The patents are obvious—both now in 2012 and back in 1994, when the first one was filed. Thankfully, a jury realized that and did what should have happened years ago: it invalidated these dangerous patents.

That's the good news. The bad news: it came after the patents already caused plenty of damage. Companies large and small have taken licenses from Eolas rather than pay millions to fight in court. Many, such as Tim Berners-Lee (who testified during trial), warned about the dangers of the Eolas patents...