Eolas - agree on the prior art .....

Mail from Phillip M. Hallam-Baker (hallam@w3.org)
which has the following date :

Date: 1995/08/22

There is a long list of prior art on the inclucsion of executable content
within the Web. This includes:

tkwww    (Published prior to October 1992)
Viola    (Demonstrated July 1993)
HTTP/1.0 Spec   (Published 1992)
emacs-www   (1992? 1993?)
Mosaic/ application/x-csh (1992, 1993)
www/ application/postscript (1991)
www-talk   (1992 threads on executable content)

The Web is simply another hypertext application though. The inclusion of a
feature from another hypertext system is therefore obvious. Thus the
following
are also of relevance :-

DEC LinkWorks    (communication PHB->TBL, 1992)
Xanadu    (Ted Nelson, 1970 ->)
NeWs    (Gosling et al. 1982?)


In addition the use of the term "weblet" to indicate a modular approach
to browser building is in current usage.


This type of nonsense is not the way we do buisness on the Web. The
community
has grown without Mr Doyle's assistance and will continue to do so. The
technology he claims ownership of was clearly understood to be part of the
original concept of the Web and there is ample evidence to support this
claim.

Irrespective of the intended licensing arrangements there is simply nothing
that adds value in the Eolas claim. I see nothing that I regard as novel or
original. It is interesting to note that the work was performed using
Mosaic.
Many of the projects I refer to were published before the publication of
Mosaic.

Perhaps the net could compile a more complete list. Please do it in news
and do not mail me!


It seems odd that US patent law should permit the granting of a patent
merely
to use a well known technique within a famework explicitly designed to
support
extensibillity.

Received on Tuesday, 2 September 2003 11:04:27 UTC