Is Opera Facing a Patent Lawsuit?
Published July 7th, 2006 12:08 PM EDT By Yakov ShafranovichRecently while using the new Opera 9, I noticed that on some sites with Flash content a new message appeared: “Click to activate and use this control”.
Here are some screenshots from American Express’s site:
(click on screenshots to enlarge)
The Opera 9 changelog had an obscure footnote about this: “Some plug-in content will now require you to click before you can interact with it”. A comment by Johan Borg, Opera’s Desktop Team Manager, in an earlier changelog throws a little more light on the issue: “Flash interactivity should be available, but sometimes requires a click to activate the plug-in. We’re in the process of aligning plug-in activation with IE7 and that has probably lead to some bugs here and there”.
A little bit of background here: a tiny company called Eolas has been suing Microsoft for almost seven years over the use of plug-ins in a web browser. In 2003, a federal jury found Microsoft guilty of patent infringement to the tune of $520 million. The case has been appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which refused to hear the case in 2005. At this time the case has gone back to its original judge.
The lawsuit revolved around a single patent: US # 5,838,906, filed all the way back in the misty 1994 before the Web became popular. The patent is for the use of plug-ins like Flash, Java and ActiveX controls within a web page - a technology which virtually all web users are familiar with. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) felt that this was so fundamental to the infrastructure of the Web, that they took the unusual step of asking the US Patent Office to reexamine the patent in 2003. However, on June 6, 2006 the Patent Office issued a Re-exam Notice confirming the patent as valid. Microsoft changed Internet Explorer a little before that (April of 2006), requiring plug-ins to be clicked on before a user can interact with them (see this KB entry), which in their legal opinion is not covered by this patent. Of course, this remains to be seen since this claim has not been tested in court.
There has been ongoing speculation as to whether Eolas is planning on going after other browsers, especially considering that the plug-in functionality is virtually the same across all of them. The fact that Opera is changing plug-in handling to match what Microsoft is doing may signal their fear of a patent lawsuit from Eolas. This is something that is probably weighing heavily on the minds of all browser makers, especially considering the confirmation of the patent as valid and legal failure of Microsoft. It remains to be seen whether Eolas will in fact go after other companies, and whether plug-in behavior in other browsers will match Microsoft’s.
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using
Silly patents. Software patents are stupid and ridiculous. And this new click to activate thing is damn annoying.
using
this is not an opera only message.
using
Damn software patents!
using
I think Opera simply taking mesures so it won’t in any way be sued.
This doesn’t mean it is going to be sued as the post title suggests…
using
I knew MS was being sued, I was not sure if the same lawsuit could be filled against other browsers (I thought it was something specific to how IE deals with plugins). Thanks for this informative article
The probability that Opera is being sued is close to zero. But even if they were to be sued, at this point the likelihood that it would impact their operations in a significant manner is near nil. Maybe you don’t know because you people are not law students or lawyers or journalists, so it’s understandable.
The Eolas ‘906 patent is invalid, despite appearances to the naïve public to the contrary. The “controlling patent” is US No. 7,016,084 by a guy named Irving Tsai from MIT who is rumoured to be a friend of Jon Von Tetzchner’s (no less!).
Check out the claims section of that patent.
The reason no one is talking about this to the public is because Bill Gates allegedly was stealing from the inventor, with the help of the inventor’s lawyers, whom he bribed. The inventor went to Steve Jobs “for help” only to have Jobs rob him also. Someone blogged about this last year in a blog commentary which has become eerily prescient as of last week.
See:
http://p2pnet.net/index.php?page=comment&story=5185&comment=15123
then compare the allegations from the above to Bill Gates’ “surprise announcement” last week regarding a Microsoft and a “Universal Communications Platform” :
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2006/06-26unifiedcomm.asp
Further, within just the past 24 hours there have been reports that Microsoft plans to declare war on Apple’s iPod this Christmas. See these next two links:
http://www.playfuls.com/news_03341_Microsoft_plans_to_kill_iPod_for_Christmas.html
http://www.forbes.com/2006/07/07/microsoft-apple-ipod-cx_po_0707autofacescan03.html
and again with respect to “prescience” note how that June 2005 blog says and I quote:
“We saw something else that might concern you Mr. Jobs: we saw inventions specifically crafted for attacking Apple’s market grip on the iPod.”
Taken together the commentary appears rather credible if you ask me.
Supposedly Windows Vista was delayed to cut out portions of code that infringe on the 7,016,084 patent, and not because of security reasons, which were just a front for the public.
See this story about the “In a hastily scheduled conference call Tuesday” to announce the delay of Windows Vista on March 21, 2006.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,125213,00.asp
Jim Alchin made the announcement the afternoon of the same Tuesday that the 7,016,084 patent was published.
Microsoft was supposedly watching out for it and expected it to come, but was holding back on making its move until the patent formally published, as it surely did that Tuesday morning, of the day Allchin was ordered to reveal to the public the delay of Vista.
And 24 hours after that, Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer would be separated from the OS!
See the Slashdot.org report on this:
http://slashdot.org/articles/06/03/22/1817258.shtml
It was precisely the integration of browser-to-OS that triggered the DOJ antitrust suit, was it not? And Bill Gates testified under oath that the two could not be separated without destroying Windows.
Now the two are being cleaved apart – without fanfare and seemingly in the hope that the public will not even notice what happened. Why? What’s going on here?
As PBS tech historian “Robert X. Cringely” calls it, this whole “mess” Microsoft is secretly in, and the Watergate-like cover-up and bribery and conspiracy was what necessitated Gates’ departure to become a full-time philanthropist – and not some sudden found love of humanitarian issues. The question is, if a scandal suddenly explodes into the news and dirty deeds become revealed, how will Warren Buffet react to his having been duped by “his trusted buddy Bill Gates”, who has apparently played Warren as a PR prop, just as he has played evrybody else?
Tim Berners Lee is not innocent either, but let’s leave him out. Although one should know that TimBL sits in an office in the “Stata Center” built with money Bill Gates gave MIT, in 1998-1999, when this scandal was just beginning. Price of complicity. Silly little office.
The bottom line however is that it is unlikely Opera need ever worry about Eolas. On the contrary, it is Eolas that needs to worry whether they will face criminal prosecution for perpetrating a fraud against the entire Internet community, using a patent they know to be invalid, and technology that may have been stolen.
using
IMO this is an unneccessary step to Opera. It’s just stupid…
using
I remember reading specifically that they won’t go against Open Source Browsers (hence Firefox)
using
Ah yes, minghong the expert. I’m sure some random Firefox fan on a web board is exactly who Opera should be taking legal advice from.
using
I wonder if the Opera folks have ever asked Eolas for a patent license. No anticipatory obedience, please.
using
User JavaScript to bypass it: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/operaStuff/userjs/noclicktoactivate.js
using
1. In regards to the comments that Opera cannot be sued once the changes have been made:
The Eolas patent dates back from 1998. Opera may very well be liable for PAST infringement even if changes are made from this point one. Microsoft is still under the Eolas lawsuit even though they made changes.
2. Regarding the oslo1 comment in regards to the 7,016,084 patent:
The Tsai patent postdates the Eolas patent by at least 8 years. If anything, the Eolas patent will override the Tsai patent.
Additionally, the Tsai patent claims section has no relevance to the Eolas patent. It deals with voice and fax processing of web pages.
Additionally, the Eolas patent is currently active as reported by the USPTO. Unless you have some other credible source to the contrary, I am inclined to believe the US Government over some anonymous comment on another website.
using
oslo1:
Are you willing to pay Opera’s lawyer bills, then?
Or do you think that Opera can just ignore lawsuits and hope that they go away without having to protect the company from those lawsuits?