Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Viola - UCB
Author: David Valentine Posted: 3/30/2000; 11:35:43 PM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 3/30/00 Msg #: 15806 (In response to 15795) Prev/Next: 15805 / 15807
Now lets see. Patent was filed in 1994, by someone associated with the University of California Regents. Pei worked at UCB, and signed the standard contract(UC owns the rights).So if someone worked at IBM, and at somone at IBM filed a patent without naming them as a co-inventor, is the patent invalid?
Pei and I began working together at O'Reilly in 1991. Much of the work on Viola was experimental in nature; when I met him, Pei was hosting his work at the Experimental Computing Facility (XCF) at University of California at Berkeley.
Strangely enough, one of the reasons we reconnected recently concerned patents. Patent #5838906 has to do with controlling embedded hypermedia applications inside a browser. A person named Michael Doyle applied for this patent in 1994, and he got the patent in 1999. Now he is suing Microsoft (going after the big fish first) saying that ActiveX controls among other things infringe on his patent. The lawsuit set Microsoft off on a search for prior art and they uncovered Viola.
From the patent
Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document
Inventor(s): Doyle; Michael D. , Alameda, CA Martin; David C. , San Jose, CA Ang; Cheong S. , Pacifica, CA
Applicant(s): The Regents of the University of California, Oakland, CA Issued/Filed Dates: Nov. 17, 1998 / Oct. 17, 1994
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