Whose Prior Art Filing Triggered Eolas Reexam?

Whose Prior Art Filing Triggered Eolas Reexam? [1]

Posted by timothy on Wednesday February 11, @10:28AM
from the mysterious-ways dept.

theodp writes "The Eolas patent case history shows another prior art filing [2] 
was quietly made ten days before the widely-publicized W3C filing and two weeks 
before Tim Berner-Lee's reexam request. Now Ray Ozzie speculates the earlier filing 
was one being floated at the time that was jointly signed by a number of other 
parties [3] who supported W3C member Dave Raggett's prior art, which Microsoft 
unsuccessfully tried to use in the $521 million Eolas lawsuit. Ozzie also notes 
that those involved argued for all to stand solidly behind the Raggett prior art 
and not cite anything else. So who are these other parties, and was it their filing 
and lobbying that triggered the Eolas reexam?" 

[1] http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/11/141200
[2] http://pair.uspto.gov/cgi-bin/final/pairsearch.pl?searchtype=patent&patentnumber=5,838,906 
[3] http://weblog.siliconvalley.com/column/dangillmor/archives/001771.shtml#001771

Received on Sunday, 15 February 2004 13:38:32 UTC