Everyone Gets Sued for AJAX Patent? | Hacker News Reader

Everyone Gets Sued for AJAX Patent?

imvivo.com

64 pointswglb52 comments

This is my favorite part of the article:

Intellectual property is the lifeblood of the U.S. economy. The primary reason for this has been the success of the U.S. patent system in allowing the innovative company in a field to develop and market its new inventions without having competitors unfairly profit from the innovator's hard work," says Dr. Doyle.

As far as I can tell, this company doesn't market or sell anything, except patents. So who are their competitors?

Once you've trolled a couple patents, you come up with catchy platitudes that make the issue seem less one-sided to the uninformed.

There's surely somebody profiting unfairly from other people's hard work here, but it's Eolas.

Depending on the reading of the patent, one could argue this covers the entirety of the browser => server request cycle and not just AJAX. Obviously this is absurd, but perhaps more so is that the patent system upholds this kind of nonsense. I wonder if the patent office reviewers have any perception of how their collective foolishness can disrupt the marketplace for good and evil. I was hoping to argue that this lawsuit may further the adoption of WebSockets (http://dev.w3.org/html5/websockets/) but after reading portions of the patent I have to say that I wouldn't be surprised if Eolas claims WebSockets fall under their ludicrous jurisdiction of "clients manipulating data objects".

Here's a decent sitepoint article on the matter: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/11/05/violating-eolas-aj...

Of course, even if it's limited to the exchange provided by XMLHttpRequest, the proto-AJAX technology was released as an ActiveX object in 1999: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmlhttprequest#History_and_supp...

So, considering that they filed this patent in 2002, there are three years of prior art to consider.

I completely agree. How could this point have been missed by the USPTO? Does copyright really not factor into patent decisions? It's infuriating.

I sillily responded prior to reading the sitepoint link - that is a much better article than the OP.

Just to keep the dates straight, application 09/075,359 was a continuation of application 08/324,443, which was filed Oct 17, 1994.

It sounds to me like the patent is way too broad to be contested effectively by Eolas.

Oh sheesh. Them again: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eolas

If there was ever a patent troll, it's them.

At a certain point in time, that guy had actually made some comments to the effect that they'd limit themselves to Microsoft, rather than pursuing the thing as much as possible, which seemed, in some ways, a 'decent' thing to do (and apparently you can do that with patents; not so with trademarks). Looks like the dollar signs may have won out.

Why on earth would patent-trolling Microsoft be acceptable, even 'decent'?

I'm not in favor of patent trolling, but if you're going to do so, I think they're pretty much fair game. It's not as if Microsoft is a bunch of lily-white innocents, after all.

Also, what was 'decent' (note the quotes...) was that they were supposedly just going to go after one group with deep pockets and leave everyone else alone. Once again: I'm not in favor of patent scams, but the idea that you would not simply shake everyone and anyone down was sort of well... 'decent' as far as that stuff goes. So it's sort of a 'negative image' - what's decent is what they were not going to do, if that makes sense.

It might be bitter-sweet, since MS funded the SCO patent-troll mission, and would be nice to give them a taste of their own medicine; but you have to remember, Microsoft invented AJAX. It's just karmically wrong.

SCO wasn't suing over patents. It was a copyright thing over the Unix source code. MS has actually been comparatively benign with their patent behavior over the years. The FAT thing is the only example I can think of where they've used one agressively.

Regardless, if something is wrong it's wrong. Our goal here should be getting the patent system to stop sucking, not using it as a weapon of schadenfreude against companies we don't like.

This whole patent is annoying because it reflects something that has been bothering me about the web for a long time. We built this enormous architecture that is built on TCP/IP, then carefully, oh-so-carefully made damn sure that it was much, much less functional than the base it was built on. Only recently are we sort of getting back to the base capabilities of TCP/IP with web sockets, and by the very phrase "web sockets" you can guess that they're a bit mucked up. Which they are.

It should hardly be patent-worthy when somebody figures out a way to undo the damage done to TCP/IP by a higher layer. Obviously TCP/IP is useful, why would it be remotely surprising that bi-directional communication is a good idea? It's not like the implementations are that surprising; channels of data are channels of data. Anyone who doesn't find that an obvious statement is not "skilled in the art".

I suppose I should rush out to file a patent on layering SSL back onto web sockets. Or proxying web sockets back to real sockets. If somebody hasn't already.

I share your outrage. Fortunately, WebSockets are specified to be able to connect over TLS, and proxying WebSockets to TCP was one of the first use cases for WebSockets.

You could patent using something like SlowAES (http://code.google.com/p/slowaes/) to send encrypted data over a plaintext WebSocket, but obviously that should not be a patentable "invention."

On a side note, I question why you call WebSockets "mucked up." The connection handshake differs from TCP to fit the web security model. Overall it is very close to the wire.

Just as you say at the end there. It makes me grumpy that instead of being able to just pop open a socket to an XMPP server I have to jump through hoops. I give a specific example, but the principle holds generally. (What will happen of course is that XMPP servers will adapt to be able to run over web sockets. Speaking for the server I've spent the most time with as a developer, ejabberd, it's nearly trivial.)

Security and domain stuff I'm fine with (don't need random web pages open random connections to SMTP servers and sending out spam!), but we still end up shut off from a lot of useful existing stuff for what I see as dubious security benefits since it'll all be proxied and/or re-implemented to work with websockets anyhow.

How does it work? Technology itself dates back at least to 1999 when XMLHTTP ActiveX control for IE was released, or even 1996 when IFrame became available. Poster-boy for AJAX—GMail—appeared in 2004, the term itself was coined in 2005.

They were able to get patent for it in 2009. Hmmmm.

It doesn't matter when the patent was granted - it matters when it was filed.

Of course, in this case, it was filed in 2002. The patent is completely bunk.

Considering, however, the eastern district of Texas - it'll probably make it through. That is, if JP Morgan Chase doesn't fight it.

Close, but not quite. FTP:

This application is a continuation and claims the benefit of U.S. application Ser. No. 09/075,359, filed May 8, 1998 now abandoned, which is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/324,443, filed Oct. 17, 1994 now U.S. Pat. No. 5,838,906, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference.

The lawyers will only see one date, and that date is 1994. Also, don't forget that there is a 1 year bar on patentability, so it is plausible that the prosecution could claim invention as early as 1993.

People were doing this in the 90s though.

Before XMLHttpRequest it was:

var i = new Image(); i.src = "/something.cgi?SEND_TO_SERVER"

Then when the image is loaded, check the dimensions of it to receive a small amount of data from the server...

if (i.width==10) { // Server wants us to do X

I remember using this exact code to write an updating scoreboard for a worm game I wrote in js, in 1999. No pageloads etc. AJAX!

Software patents just need to die completely.

I think hackernews used to use a similar method.

Sure - It's obvious. Patenting anything like that is just ridiculous. It's like patenting the idea of having a pitched roof on top of a house.

It's a shame some do see things like this as innovative unique ideas that need protecting.

FWIW I don't think we help matters by constantly reinventing the same ideas with new buzzwords. "Real time web"? really.

That image trick is brilliant. I have never heard of that before.

another classic technique was to pass a cookie back with the image and you could then access a couple of Kb of data

I think implementation should be allowed to be patented, but vague ideas describing what you want to do, but haven't done are worthless. They only reason they are worth something is because the government is artificially giving them worth by covering millions of possible implementation with a couple of sentences.

On the brightside, more abuse means more unrest. So hopefully we're getting closer to reform.

Seriously, someone needs to go to Tyler and take these joke-of-a-judge's gavels away. Totally annoying.

This sort of thing should not be legal.

How they sleep at night is beyond me.

I bet their millions make them sleep very comfortably.

Im guessing $500 Million makes a fairly comfy mattress :(

Roy: "So, what do you do, Don?"

Don Draper: "I blow up bridges."

Midge: "Don’s in advertising."

Roy: "No way! Madison Avenue? What a gas!"

Midge: "We all have to serve somebody."

Roy: "Perpetuating the lie. How do you sleep at night?"

Don: "On a bed made of money."

Great reference. Chuckle every time I think of it.

Regarding the actual legality of such a suit, doesn't some ind of statute of limitations apply here? This has been a blatantly obvious part of of a very public industry for a long time. And NOW, in 2009, they choose to sue all of the internet giants for their idea? There's no way they can claim this isn't just about wanting more money.

I'm a total legal noob... Is it possible that lawsuits like this might be impacted by the outcome of the pending opinion from the Supreme Court on In re Bilski?

Perhaps it's a fear of the Bilski outcome that's motivating the "sue everyone" strategy -- squeeze out some payments before SCOTUS rules.

This is mostly bad, but I can see three bits of good news in the mess:

1. Litigating against so many companies will take time. Likely the first patent will have expired long before the current cases have finished. I doubt they'll have too much more time to sue people, so it's not likely to affect companies any of us start.

2. The validity of the second 2004 patent that discusses AJAX and makes claims that would hurt most of the companies named has not as far as I can tell yet been tested in a court. It's possible that the plugin patent was valid, and the AJAX one is not. If so, the danger to us is much less.

3. The more big companies are hurt by patent trolling, the more effort they'll likely spend on trying to reform the system.

We'll see how it goes.

I am never surprised to see that software patent trials are always filed in the eastern district of Texas. I wonder how successful these would be if done in any other court district.

Amazon.com is in the list... Maybe a little software patent karma?

The combined legal budgets of the defendants must be massive; I wonder if they really considered that...

Microsoft couldn't stop them, now they have a precedent on their side, and 500 million in the bank. I think they'll win.

I just wish this was the defining case of software patents, where companies would realize why it sucks. Ahhh... probably not.

Did MS actually pay out the $500m yet?

They are fighting against Google, Adobe, Apple, etc. That is ridiculous. Even the independent programmers and hackers of the web are sure to outraged over this.

If they do succeed will every site that uses AJAX have to pay them a fee? I don't think that even makes sense.

More ridiculous is that they're fighting against JP Morgan Chase. With a net income of 5.6 billion dollars in 2008. And assets of ~$2 trillion.

JP Morgan probably has more legal counsel than the rest of the defendants, combined.

JP Morgan is no more formidable in litigation than Microsoft, and they've already beaten Microsoft.

Really? I have no metrics to go on other than assets/income. Do you have statistics? If nothing else, the sheer army of lawyers that could be brought to bear by the defendants could effectively paralyze Eolas under paperwork.

The paper equivalent of a DDOS.

Consider: Microsoft has been in business for 3 decades and 2 of them have been spent fighting IP lawyers. They're much more likely to know their way around software/IP law than anyone else. I'm not arguing much against your statement of a legal deluge on behalf of the defendents: I agree with that. However, these guys just won 500 million dollars -- surely Microsoft tried the same tactics that these new defendants are going to employ. I hope they work this time.

That makes sense: the thing that works in their favour though is the sheer number of huge companies who can bring their clout to this. They will collaborate to tie the proceedings up in decades of endless litigation. But more importantly think of the political clout of these companies.

Good point. The government would also tend to be hesitant to let this put pressure on the bank as well because many banks are already in such trouble here in the US.

On the other hand this is far from JP Morgans core business. So perhaps they'll be more likely to throw some money at them to shut them up, and not tie up a bunch of their lawyers in something which they have no real interest in.

Agree. And Eolas would gladly settle with JP Morgan to get the ball rolling and encourage others to follow suit.

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