Legal Harassment for fun and profit
Here's one that I'm amazed this hasn't shown up on Slashdot. Apparently SBC has patented website menus in Patent #6,442,574 and are trying to intimidate small companies into paying them cash.
SBC is thinking too small. The company SBC is hounding looks to me like it brings in about $65 a year in revenue - no way can they cough up the big bucks. Ever since I can remember Microsoft has had a little black navigator bar at the top of their site and they are sitting on a huge pile of cash. Let's examine Microsoft's navigator bar using SBC's logic:
| claim |
infringement |
| A browser for navigating a document comprising a plurality of sections, the browser comprising: |
A user accesses www.microsoft.com website with a browser |
| A display window for displaying a document; and |
The user interface of the microsoft.com website includes a document frame in which selected portions of the website document are displayed |
| A user interface comprising a plurality of selectors automatically configured to correspond to a respective plurality of sections of the document regardless of what section of the document is being displayed in the display window; |
The user interface of www.microsoft.com includes a selector section that includes selectors for navigating through the website document. The selectors remain in the selector section regardless of the document portion displayed in the document frame |
| Wherein the plurality of selectors are not part of the document displayed in the display window of the browser and continue to be displayed after one of the plurality of selectors is selected |
The selectors remain in the selector section even after a user selects one to change the document portion displayed in the document frame |
Okay so Microsoft doesn't use a frame right now, but I think the argument doesn't really change - that bar isn't part of the document per se. According to the licensing terms sent to museumtour SBC looks ready soak Microsoft for a $50 million license. Actually, they could soak nearly every major web site with this. Instead they're hounding little teeny companies? I wonder why that could be? Could it be because that same $50 million would buy enough lawyer power to nuke this back into the stone age where it belongs? Bleah.
12:54:47 AM 
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