- From: Steve H Rose <habib@world.std.com>
- Date: Mon, 21 Aug 1995 21:05:25 +0059 (EDT)
- To: pei@gnn.com
- Cc: www-talk@w3.org
Ok, folks, since I'm not a lawyer, I feel free to shoot my mouth off on a subject I know very little about :-) From my limited understanding, a patent is a legal protection over a very specific invention. As far as I know (I could be wrong), you can't patent an idea. So, the patent, if granted, could cover a specific approach to embedding program objects, but could not prohibit someone else from using a different technology to do the same kind of thing. I'd ask for clarification on this forum from someone who knows the law better than I do, but if that person is a lawyer, they might not share, for fear of being sued. Since I ADMIT I don't know what I'm talking about, and since I have very shallow pockets, I doubt anyone would bother with me :-) Yours, Steve Habib Rose On Mon, 21 Aug 1995 pei@gnn.com wrote: > > 8/21/95 CHICAGO: Eolas Technologies Inc. announced today that it has > > completed a licensing agreement with the University of California for the > > exclusive rights to a pending patent covering the use of embedded program > > objects, or "applets," within World Wide Web documents. > > > > Also covered is the use of any algorithm which implements dynamic > > bi-directional communications between Web browsers and external applications. > >[....] > > I sincerely hope this patent isn't going to stick, for the good of > the web as a whole... > > And for the record, I just want to point out that the > ``technology which enabled Web documents to contain fully-interactive > "inline" program objects'' > was existing in ViolaWWW and was *released* to the public, and in full > source code form, even back in 1993... Actual conceptualization and > existence occured before '93. > > -Pei > > pei@gnn.com > http://ebay.gnn.com/people/pei/home.html >
Received on Monday, 21 August 1995 21:06:49 UTC