The patent (US #5649131, there's a link in the article) covers a general scheme for standardized communication between a server and client (the patent refers to 'host' and 'terminal').

Specifically, the server and client agree on a set of defined 'objects' (in this case including text boxes, drop-down menus, and images). The client then displays said objects to the user by following instructions from the server. The claimed innovation seems to be that the server and client talk about the aforementioned objects rather than sending exact descriptions of the client's display back and forth.

Alcatel-Lucent intended to apply the patent very broadly - consider a web server as the 'host' and a web browser as the 'terminal', for example.