IP-WARS.NET || Even I Might Be Able To...

Even I Might Be Able To...

By JCausey, Section IP Articles
Posted on Wed Feb 22nd, 2006 at 23:21:23 EST

Find some prior art for this doozy. Ran across this article from the InformationWeek newsfeed - U.S. Grants Patent For Broad Range Of Internet Rich Applications - about a patent that has been awarded that would appear to cover every "rich media" application delivered via the Internet. According to the article this would include:

Flash, Flex, Java, Ajax, and XAML, when the rich-media application is accessed on any device over the Internet

If you look up the patent, #7,000,180 (aka the 180 patent), you'll see that it was originally filed in February 2001, though it makes reference to some patent applications filed in 2000, which it includes by reference. Now, I'm no guru on the timeline of the development of rich media being delivered over the web, but I'll bet there were plenty of implementations of it prior to that which would constitute prior art. And by 2000, it would seem that such was also obvious. According to the "inventor",

Balthaser says he began to develop rich-media application processes while developing Websites for large corporate clients in the late 1990s using Macromedia Flash 3.

According to Wikipedia, Macromedia's Flash has been around since 1996 (and was preceded by the product Macromedia bought and developed into Flash before that), well before the patent application. It would seem pretty obvious then that since at least 1996, folks were developing Flash files and apps and putting them on their websites. Following a link from there to Rich Internet Applications, there is some history:

The term "Rich Internet Application" was introduced in a Macromedia whitepaper in March 2002, though the concept had been around for a number of years before that under different names such as:
Remote Scripting, by Microsoft, circa 1998

X Internet, by Forrester Research in October 2000

Webtop, coined by Hummingbird Ltd for their DM WebServer product in February 2002,

Rich (Web) Clients,

Rich Web Application

The "inventor" says he is ready to defend the patent, though he really wants to sell it and let someone else be responsible for enforcing it. Will anyone bite? Or do others see that it would eventually be overturned and any investment would be a waste?

Thanks for reading,
Jeff

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