The World Wide Web Consortium is supporting Microsoft in its battle against a web browser patent that the standards-setting body says could damage the web – and it has this week called upon the US Patent Office to declare the patent invalid.
The Consortium, known as W3C, is an international standards-setting body for the internet. Its members – which number more than 300 – include Microsoft as well as other leading technology and software companies.
W3C's director, Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the World Wide Web, has written to the US Patent and Trademark Office over a patent that a court found in August to be infringed by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the browser used by 96% of internet users, according to market researcher WebSideStory.
The patent allows web browsers to access interactive application programs. The court awarded damages of $520.6 million to patent holder the University of California and its licensee, the tiny Eolas Technologies.
Microsoft is appealing the verdict but has already revealed its proposed steps to alter Explorer, in case the appeal fails.
"W3C urges the USPTO to initiate a re-examination of the '906 patent in order to prevent substantial economic and technical damage to the operation of World Wide Web," wrote Berners-Lee.
He added:
"The impact of this patent will be felt not only by those who are alleged to directly infringe, but all whose web pages and application rely on the stable, standards-based operation of browsers threatened by this patent. In many cases, those who will be forced to incur the cost of modifying Web pages or software applications do not even themselves infringe the patent - assuming it is even valid."
The validity of patents is a difficult and technical issue, but it is recognised that where the feature being patented is already in the public domain – known as “prior art” – then it cannot be patented.
According to the W3C, the sole difference between the web browser described in the '906 patent and typical browsers that the patent itself acknowledges as prior art, is that, with prior art browsers, the content is displayed in a new window, whereas, with the '906 browser, the content is displayed in the same window as the rest of the web page.
But the W3C claims that that feature (i.e., displaying, or embedding, content generated by an external program in the same window as the rest of a web page) is a prior art, and has submitted evidence to the USPTO in an attempt to prove this.
Accordingly, says the W3C, the Eolas patent is not valid, and should be re-examined by the Patent Office.
The US Federal Trade Commission has also been considering patent invalidity this week.
According to Law.com, the FTC is proposing that Congress pass new laws simplifying the process of proving a patent to be invalid. These would include changing the burden of proof, to make it easier to prove invalidity, a review procedure after the grant of patents, more funding from the USPTO, and that examiners should consider the effect of the patent on competition before granting it.