Do Feeble Arguments Justify PTO's Eolas Findings?

Do Feeble Arguments Justify PTO's Eolas Findings?
Contributed by Mike on Thursday, March 25th, 2004 @ 08:46AM
from the coulda woulda shoulda dept.

theodp writes "In its Eolas Plug-In Patent Reexam Findings (pdf file), 
the USPTO finds the W3C-provided prior art flawed, but tosses in 
the 'teachings of Berners-Lee' (e.g., 'HTML browsers parse HTML'), 
the first 12 pages of a 1987 OO book (e.g., 'applying object oriented 
techniques to software makes the software more tolerant to change'), 
an article about rumored changes to circa-1993 X Windows, and a 
healthy dose of coulda-woulda-shoulda (e.g., 'it would have been obvious') 
to justify its conclusion that all ten of the patent's claims are 
meritless. While the decision may save Microsoft $521 million, it's 
too bad the USPTO had to resort to such feeble arguments (e.g., the 
'teachings of Berners-Lee' were also cited in GRANTING the patent!) and 
vaporware. Documentation of successfully implemented prior art was readily 
available, but the W3C elected to disregard the public's input." 

Links at:

http://techdirt.com/articles/20040325/0845252.shtml

Received on Thursday, 25 March 2004 12:32:52 UTC