Re: Summary of 7 November 2003 HTML PAG teleconference

Susan -

Guess this explains why I never heard back from the W3C regarding my Eolas prior art suggestion [see below].

Couple of questions:

1. A little birdie at the USPTO tells me that the W3C may NOT submit more prior art to help the examiner in the announced reexamination, which contradicts what was said in the 11-7 W3C teleconference. Is the USPTO incorrect, or is it indeed too late to submit additional prior art for this reexamination? 

2. Another little birdie at the USPTO tells me that the prior art submitted by the W3C had already been submitted in an earlier filing by another unnamed party. The USPTO site does seem to indicate that another reexamination request was filed earlier than the W3C's. Is the W3C aware of another filing and the party behind it?

Regards.

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Subj:    Eolas Patent Prior Art 
  Date:    11/5/2003 1:20:19 AM Eastern Standard Time 
  From:    Theo DP 
  To:    janet@w3.org 
  Cc:    djw@w3.org 
 
Janet -

Don't know if you ever got it, but I left a message for you last week regarding the Eolas patent.

Didn't hear back, so I posted the item below to slashdot - be sure to check it out!

Good luck!

theodp@aol.com

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From slashdot, lots of links at:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/02/1752233&mode=thread&tid=109&tid=126&tid=155&tid=187&tid=95&tid=99

Are MS, W3C Barking Up Wrong Prior Art Tree? 

Posted by timothy on Sunday November 02, @04:32PM
from the seeking-patents-is-rational-behavior dept.

theodp writes "CNET reports on how Microsoft and the W3C are spotlighting old technology - Pei Wei's Viola browser and W3C staff member Dave Raggett's HTML+ specification - in an effort to defeat Eolas' Web patent. In his ruling, the Eolas judge agreed that a Wei presentation that included an interactive image of a chessboard came close to prior art, but explained that the late 1994 date of invention excluded it from the ambit of prior art. Perhaps the judge might have ruled differently had he been shown January 1994 correspondence between Tim Berners-Lee, Pei Wei, Dave Raggett, and others in response to a challenge to match the prior art of the interactive, networked games that were operational on the PLATO system in the 70s at the University of Illinois to make it possible to develop browser-based chess games." (Read on for more.) 

theodp continues: "If they were up on PLATO history, Microsoft's lawyers could have shown the judge that operational prior art existed two decades earlier than Eolas', Wei's, and Raggett's efforts. Not only that, there are striking similarities between PLATO and Eolas patents. BTW, Eolas patent holder Michael Doyle obtained his degrees from the University of Illinois, where PLATO was developed and widely used."

Received on Sunday, 16 November 2003 23:35:01 UTC