Eolas
Eolas is a United States research and development company and patent licensee. It was founded in 1994 by Dr. Michael David Doyle. His UCSF team created the first web browser that supported plug-ins. They demonstrated it at Xerox PARC, in November 1993, at the second Bay Area SIGWEB meeting.
History
Eolas released an updated version of that browser, called WebRouser, in September 1995, for noncommercial use. [1] The plug-in technology was later incorporated into Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browsers, as well as others.
Microsoft Lawsuit
The company won a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft in summer 2003, after a five-week jury trial. Princeton professor Edward Felten testified that the patent was valid and that Microsoft infringed it with all of their versions of Windows from Windows 95 through all present versions.
Pei Wei was Microsoft's star witness, but was discredited on the witness stand [2], when it was demonstrated that the version of Viola that he asserted anticipated the Eolas patent was actually designed in such a way that it could not have ever worked over the Internet. Dave Raggett testified for Microsoft at trial that his HTML+ specification anticipated the invention, but then admitted under cross examination that his proposed use of the EMBED tag was for the display of static non-interactive pictures in a web page. Microsoft's financial expert, Creighton Hoffman, testified that MS Windows' Internet Explorer ActiveX technology should be considered worth only $3 million dollars.
In his closing arguments, Eolas attorney Martin Lueck stated that the Eolas invention "allowed Microsoft to prevent the commoditization of the operating system. It allowed Microsoft to sell units of Windows. It allowed them to fend off the attack from Netscape to control the API...The damages number is large because Microsoft has made unprecedented use. You heard Mr. Nawrocki sit up here and say that in his 20 years of working in this field, it is the largest damages base he has ever seen. So as you consider what is reasonable, consider what's reasonable to Microsoft to continue to be able to use the '906 patent in its products beginning in November of 1998 so that it can continue to protect the healthy revenue streams and profit streams it's getting at $18 billion over three and a half years... Lastly, before I sit down, Microsoft will point to alternatives. I will simply tell you that as you look in this courtroom today, you will see that each and every one of the Windows products that have been sold since 1996 have Internet Explorer with them enabled with the full '906 technology. They haven't taken it off because they can't take it off."
The 12-person jury, which contained at least two engineers and a Web designer, returned a $521 million verdict for Eolas after less than one day of deliberation. Several weeks later, Tim Berners-Lee wrote to US Patent Office Commissioner James E. Rogan, citing two Raggett references that had been exhibits at trial, because he felt the web was in danger [3], but he misquoted one of the Raggett references and mischaracterized the features claimed in the patent. Rogan granted the reexam the day after Berners-Lee's request. Rogan, a "strong Microsoft Corp. supporter during the Justice Department's antitrust case against the software giant" [4], resigned shortly afterward. The stated reason for his resignation was his desire to work on his autobiography [5].
In the January, 2004 ruling [6] that upheld the jury's verdict, Judge James Zagel expressed skepticism concerning both Berners-Lee's motives and the justification for a re-examination by the US patent office.[7]. Shortly afterward, Microsoft announced that it would not remove the plug-in technology from Windows while the case is being appealed [8].
External links
Eolas is also one of the three Gaelic words for knowledge, meaning "knowledge of experience." The other two are fios (knowledge of history) and focmart (knowledge from exploration).
Referenced By
SIGWEB | WebRouser
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