Closed Bug 217601 (eolas) Opened 22 years ago Closed 9 years ago

eolas patent 5,838,906 embedding of objects in hypermedia documents (plug-ins)

Categories

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Product:
Core Graveyard
Component:
Plug-ins
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
major

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WORKSFORME

People

(Reporter: caberome, Assigned: mitchell)

References

(
URL
)

Details

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030701 Epiphany/0.9.2 Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i586; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030701 Epiphany/0.9.2 might it now be wise to completely dump the hated notation of browser plugins. with internet explorer dumping plugin support this should be universally accepted. bye-bye flash, java (oji), realplayer... support svg, smil, javascript-2 to replace functionality. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
.
Assignee: peterlubczynski-bugs → mitchell
Here's the link to the US patent office: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5,838,906.WKU.&OS=PN/5,838,906&RS=PN/5,838,906 I'm not sure how this applies to our implementation of NPAPI as the patent talks about "interprocess communication" and we only use inTRAprocess communication as we always load the 3rd party code into our memory address space.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
W3C statement on the topic is here: http://www.w3.org/2003/08/patent To summarize: "...In the near term, Microsoft has indicated to W3C that they will very soon be making changes to its Internet Explorer browser software in response to this ruling. These changes may affect a large number of existing Web pages. W3C does not yet have any indication of what action, if any, other vendors of Web tools might take. In the longer term, should the court decision be upheld in its current form, some participants suggested that other action might be required. W3C has made efforts to contact the patent holder to determine their future intentions, but has not received any reply. W3C believes that it is important for the Web community to begin now to consider and contribute to the range of technical options available...." I don't think it would be wise to remove until requested to do so. Doing so will be a major strike against Mozilla. But perhaps this could be a launching pad for Mozilla. SVG, SMIL will be replacements perhaps.
I'm no lawyer, but only (X)HTML is a source of hypertext. If a given document contains no links and is not written in a language intended for hypertext/hypermedia, is it still hypermedia? Plugin and <embed> support could be retained through a non-hypertext dialect of XML, like XUL, or in a further proprietory dialect. That further dialect could contain an <embed> or <object> tag, and its namespace automatically recognised in an HTML document without need for explicit declaration. Net effect: backwards compatibility.
There is no urgency to do anything. It's not even clear that Eolas will take action against Mozilla. A couple of Mozilla people are in the loop of the W3C discussions. This is all in "wait and see" mode and will probably stay that way for a while.
adding some words to help this show up better in searches...
Alias: eolas
Summary: patent 5,838,906 embedding of objects in hypermedia documents → eolas patent 5,838,906 embedding of objects in hypermedia documents (plug-ins)
It seems there are known prior arts that may invalidate Eolas patent : http://www.ozzie.net/blog/stories/2003/09/12/savingTheBrowser.html Also this is a US issue only, international users from countries where the patent doesn't apply shouldn't be affected by changes in Mozilla.
OS: Linux → All
Hardware: PC → All
Has mozilla.org approached Eolas? Has Eolas approached mozilla.org? Maybe a settlement of $1 can be reached.
> ...Maybe a settlement of $1 can be reached. Microsoft would interpret it as unfair competition ;)
not blocking development. severity -> major
Severity: blocker → major
Big News: http://news.com.com/2100-1023_3-5141318.html?tag=st_lh Could this be blocking a release? I think it may be wsie to re-evaluate this now. According to the article: > As part of his decision, Zagel barred Microsoft from distributing versions of > its Web software that include the potentially infringing technology. However, > he immediately put that injunction on hold until an appeal has run its course. > Microsoft is expected to appeal immediately. I'm rather shocked myself. It may be time to start thinking about how to deal with this problem, and beat Microsoft to a solution.
better news : <http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/36065.html>. Eolas lost its patent. They have 60 days to appeal however.
60 days has passed. Can we close this?
The patent review is still open
this can be closed according too eolas they wont go after ff since its free and open source
That isn't necessarily enough to close it: MPL 3.4(a) seems to indicate that we should mention this in the LEGAL file we ship with the source.
(In reply to comment #20) > That isn't necessarily enough to close it: MPL 3.4(a) seems to indicate that we > should mention this in the LEGAL file we ship with the source. > ok on another thought about this is that many might view it as a sucrity improvement if we add the click to activate and use this control on them but should be possable for users too turn it off
http://operawatch.com/news/2006/07/is-opera-facing-a-patent-lawsuit.html The latest Opera 9 has implementing a feature in response to the Eolas patent that requires user intervention before running plugins.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/317739_msftpatent30.html looks like microsoft may end up being the owner of this patent if they have there way
QA Contact: bmartin → plugins
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 9 years ago
Resolution: --- → WORKSFORME
Product: Core → Core Graveyard
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