Web design patent claim

[pielover]

I thought you would find this interesting:
http://www2.museumtour.com/sbc.html

This website got a letter asking for royalties for infringing on patents owned by SBC. Seems the patent regards having a "static" menu and dynamic content. How unique is that??

They have posted the entire mailing they recieved here. Makes you wonder how many others have this letter in their mailboxes?

[Alan Perkins]

See Sued for selling online (http://www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5251&perpage=10&pagenumber=1)

[scottiecl]

Nice.

So anyone who has a navbar that remains in the same place throughout the site is in violation of this patent.

I can't believe some patent judge was dumb enough to grant a patent on a web page layout, which is basically what they've done.

That is the equivalent of getting a patent for a table of contents and an index in a reference book.

Good luck defending that patent, guys. I guess we all need to go change our sites so that the links are in a different place on every page.

:lol:

[ihelpyou]

They prey on small businesses with little money to defend itself. This is bullshit of the worse kind. I would think a good lawyer would see that and defend this site or any other in court for free. That so-called patent need to be revolked and ASAP!

It seems to be one of the biggest legal(right now) scams going.

[ihelpyou]

Wait a sec, the link above and the prior thread are two different patents and companies doing the suing. Oh my. One is for the shopping cart and sales part of a site. The other is for the damn navigation.

What the heck is the patent office doing? Are they tee-totally nuts and insane?

[solo]

You know, viewing the last page of the patent, it seems that SBC is patenting an integrated "browser plus html doc" -- in other words, I think (:D) that such a browser does not exist yet! What we do have are separate browser (IE, Netscape, Opera, ...) and separate html, javascript, java, flash, etc. code that runs on the browser. They can go and sue IE and W3C or the creators of HTML, not the users!

Well, anyway my 2 c

solo

[pielover]

Alan, thanks for the link. SBC is a lot bigger than PanIP, though. I found some articles on the situation, but they don't enlighten the situation any further. Apparently MuseumTour is the only visible case so far.
ComputerWorld article (http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/legalissues/story/0,10801,77789,00.html)

SBC is risking a PR nightmare and I've seen threats of boycotting already. Our company dumped SBC (Ameritech) last year. Of course now we have MCI/Worldcom service. Yikes!

(Woops--I posted this under the other thread originally.)

[solo]

Is Instant Messaging (http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/groupware/story/0,10801,76939,00.html) next?

[Curt]

I was reading about the SBC so-called patent infringement. THEY ARE TOTALLY REDICULOUS! STUPID!!!

SBC's letter reads (partly quoted):quoted from: http://www2.museumtour.com/sbc.html

...The purpose of this letter is to advise you of an opportunity to acquire a license to the '841 and '574 Patents, copies of which are enclosed for your review

We recently observed several useful navigation features within the user interface of your www.museumtour.com website. For example, your site includes several selectors or tabs that correspond to specific locations in your site document. These selectors seem to reside in their own frame or part of the user interface. ... By separating the selectors from the content, Museum Tour has truly simplified site navigation and improved the shopping experience for its users.

As you review the Structured Document Portfolio, you will notice that the above-discussed features (as well as other valuable features) appear to infringe several issued claims in both the '841 and '574 Patents. In light of Museum Tour's presumed respect for the intellectual property rights of others, we are pleased to offer you a Preferred Rate License under the Structured Document Portfolio ...That is utterly crazy. According to SBC anyone using framesets are suppose to pay for the right to use framesets from SBC. SBC and PanIP both need a huge honking major spanking.

If you ask them, they'd say they invented the Internet and if you use HTML, you owe them money.

I can't believe those idiots would even try something like that.