Anonymous Fax regarding Eolas…

November 5, 2004 on 6:50 pm | In Lawsuits |

In a post reminding me of an old Patently Obvious blog post, I received an anonymous (no return fax # or ID) fax today addressed to "Dear Mr. Nipper."  The fax points to my recent post regarding the iPod and the citation to USPN 5,903,407.  Below is some of the intereting parts of the fax:

…but that same inventor [as the '407 patent] has another patent:  USPN 5,495,581 which includes pending Continuations, which might be applicable toward invalidating "Eolas-906" more effectively than the current prior art of record in that case…

…take a look at Figure 62 (in USPN 5,495,581).  What that shows is a computer doing what was described to us as "playing a sheet of Multimedia Paper".  Apparently, part of this person’s invention involved producing a "hardcopy rendition" of an electronic format, hyper-linked compund document.  In other words, he took as a given the existence of a hyper-linked online document of the kind under dispute in the Eolas-906 case; then used it to generate a paper based, hardcopy duplicate.  This was taught at least as far back as the filing date of that patent, 1993, which was slightly more than one year before the Eolas filing.  Figure 62 does appear to illustrate video sequences, audio, and graphs with dynamic pointers drawn from executable code on the screen of a computer.   Those entities are sample types of "embedded objects" of the kind at dispute in the Eolas case.  The patent spec reveals that all of the objects displayed on the screen are contained within a single window (another point at issue in the Eolas case).  The video sequence is described as being part of the display page — and is not part of the hardware, as can be erroneously thought.  However, in the 5495581 patent, the "embedded objects" are depicted as coming to life when a sheet of "Multimedia Paper" is played by the computer.  But because the "Multimedia Paper" stems from an electronic format "original" which it is a hardcopy duplicate of, that original had to contain them to begin with, and the ‘581 patent therefore appears to teach beyond what is contested in the Eolas-906 case — even though it was filed more than a year earlier.  (The Continuations might be useable toward provoking an interference as part of a challenge.)

Going backwards, Figure 61 in USPN-5495581 shows a sheet of "Multimedia Paper" being inserted into a computer, which by the way, is a Tablet PC (interestingly, way back in a 1993 patent filing)!  Figure 60 offers confirmation that a hyper-linked document indeed serves as a source of the hardcopy "Multimedia Paper", as a link structure is illustrated in the diagram.  Figure 59 appears to address some kind of syncronization issue in the generation of sheets of "Multi-media Paper", such that each hardcopy page continues to have access to the embedded objects corresponding to that page in the electronic version.  Figure 56(b) verifies that content is indeed being pulled from online sources, as it speaks of accessing a "Dow Jones Information Service".  Figure 56(b) shows some kind of linking issue.  The inventor seems to apply the terminology "Node Access Requirement" instead of the term we use today, URL.  Figures 54 & 55 show someting else interesting.  They apparently depict in "Multimedia Paper" the use of what are referred to in the abstract as "pre-determined attributes" to regenerate the hotspots, or linked regions, of the original electronic format document.  The device scans for the "pre-determined attributes" to identify the link regions of the hardcopy page, which appears to furnish the mechanism of identifying where on the hardcopy page electronic (embedded object) content should be superimposed, when a sheet of "Multimedia Paper" is "played".  This seems to be analogous to the much ballyhooed "EMBED" tags of the Raggett citations in the Eolas case.  It appears that the technique of the "pre-determined attribute" was used to extend the reach of the electronic tags such as the "EMBED" tag onto physical hardcopy.  Thus even with resepct to the "EMBED" tags, it appears that this patent had already anticipated them and was attempting to disclose something beyond.

Best wishes.

Interesting….comments are open.

UPDATE (November 15, 2004):  A reader pointed out typographical errors and a couple places that didn’t make sense…upon further review I found that I had (in transcribing the fax to email) left a couple sentence fragments out.  Sorry.

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7 Comments

  1. (A very late) Blawger Bowl Update

    Trackback by Loosely Coupled // Tim Marman's Weblog — November 13, 2004 #

  2. (A very late) Blawger Bowl Update

    Trackback by Loosely Coupled // Tim Marman's Weblog — November 13, 2004 #

  3. Better than W3C prior art to Eolas patent

    Trackback by Matt Bourne .NET — December 9, 2004 #

  4. The creation of patent holding companies whose business plans are based on acquiring and licensing patents will surely lead to more cases of litigation over alleged infringements. This is not good for the industry and I certainly hope the USPTO sees this as an opportunity to send a message and address the growing call for patent reform. More and more people in our industry are becoming very concerned about the entire patent process.

    You might find the results of our investigation interesting. Check it out at

    A review of the Eolas rebuttals

    Comment by Chris Ray — January 31, 2005 #

  5. I’m a little concerned that no one is paying attention to this case anymore. I’m a software developer and recently a client of the company I work for asked us to review this case. What I learned from the whole thing is that the patent process in the US with regards to software in particular is broken.

    With the matter apparently headed toward a reasonable resolution, people have stopped following the case. Outside the lens of public scrutiny, Eolas and the unwitting PTO are working surreptitiously to revive the patent most people thought was long buried. In the process, Eolas is presenting arguments that both fly in the face of common sense and contradict key positions they took during trial. Worse yet, the PTO seems to be buying it.

    The creation of patent holding companies whose business plans are based on acquiring and licensing patents will surely lead to more cases of litigation over alleged infringements. This is not good for the industry and I certainly hope the USPTO sees this as an opportunity to send a message and address the growing call for patent reform. More and more people in the software industry are becoming very concerned about the entire patent process.

    You might find the results of our investigation interesting. Check it out at http://www.iticentral.com/906Full.html

    Comment by Chris Ray — January 31, 2005 #

  6. Here is an email sent by a colleague to the European Patent Office, in view of revelations from this law blog and subsequent analysis and investigation.

    ==================copy of email follows================

    Dear EPO associate,

    I feel that there is a moral/ethical/legal obligation for those of us who are aware of this information to bring it to the attention of the appropriate authorities - in this particular case, the EPO.

    There is an American company by the name of “Neomedia” based in Fort Myers, Florida (USA) whose founder is a man named Charles Fritz, that is knowingly engaging in patent fraud, perjury, and securities fraud. The EPO recently allowed the claims of a set of patent application Neomedia filed, although it is well known to Neomedia to be INVALID !

    Here is an excerpt of a news story on the company and the pertinent patents:

    ===========begin news quote========

    24, 2005 Tuesday

    NeoMedia’s Core Mobile Marketing Linking Technology Gets EPO Nod for Protection in 10 More European Countries

    FT. MYERS, Fla. May 24, 2005

    NeoMedia Technologies, Inc. (OTC BB: NEOM), an innovator in mobile marketing services and patented PaperClick(R) technologies used in mobile marketing to provide automatic links to Internet-based information, said today that the European Patent Office (EPO) has allowed patents covering its core technology, extending coverage to 10 European countries.

    Chas W. Fritz, NeoMedia’s founder and chairman, said a Notice of Allowance from the EPO was based on proceedings conducted last month in The Hague. Recognition by the EPO extends the patents for NeoMedia’s core technology - the use of bar codes and other unique identifiers to automatically link to content on the Internet - to Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom,

    “This recognition and Notice of Allowance from the European Patent Office further strengthens and broadens NeoMedia’s already strong global patent position,” said Mr. Fritz.

    Protecting NeoMedia’s Core Technology

    “Many advancements pioneered, engineered and implemented by NeoMedia are based on this core technology,” said Mr. Fritz. “Protecting what is rightfully ours has been and remains vitally important to the company and to our ability to move forward. Now, this validation of our claim and acknowledgment of our rights provides even more protection for the company and our shareholders.”

    ===============end news quote======

    Chairman Charles Fritz was notified by several US an UK attorneys about the invalidity of his company’s patents, but has elected to conceal that information from the EPO, shareholders, and public.

    See this law blog entry, which reveals the STARTING POINT for a prior art search against the affected Neomedia patents.

    http://nip.blogs.com/patent/2004/11/cloak_and_dagge.html

    The inventions of “Tsai” from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including but not limited to the US#5,495,581 patent filed in 1993, relate to the use of embedded codes including bar code to convey links to things such as Internet addresses. An analysis of the “Tsai” patents reveals that this MIT inventor taught EXTENSIVELY about linking in a myriad of clever ways, all of which pre-date Neomedia and for that matter Eolas.

    Prosecutorial accuracy and justice mandate that the EPO be apprised of these facts, as so many of us in the academic legal community already know.

    Criminal prosecution against Neomedia for perjury and fraud may not be inappropriate, either.

    Comment by law intern — June 3, 2005 #

  7. Comment on the previous post by “law intern”: Your entry seems very suspect. A “Collegue” of yours sent this email? Right. The firm you are making libelous statements about has a highly regarded patent firm. I highly doubt a real ‘law intern’ would make such blatantly libelous statements; nor even be privy to any real information.
    Too bad internet anonymity hides your true motives; however the false nature of the ‘law intern’s entry is still apparent.

    Comment by Bob — June 20, 2005 #

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