MSFT’s alleged theft of IP from Eolas (forcing the W3C to re-think it’s own standards) is tossed out, but wait, now someone is trying to get the real origins of DOS cleared up.
Personally I think it’s great news that the spurious patent ruling in favour of Eolas has been overturned because of prior art. There are some morons who think that because the defendant is Microsoft we should be sad about this, and I admit there is a certain justice in seeing a software patent advocate hoist by their own petard.
But Eolas submarine use of a software patent to subvert the W3C standards process is something we all have to fight, teaming together across competitive and ideological barriers to address the issue. If Eolas wins, we are all the losers. It’s just a pity that there’s no low-cost fast-track to achieve the result – the main damage software patents cause is that defence against them can only be afforded by rich corporations.
Suit may revise chapter on tech history: Origins of MS-DOS (3/2/2005):
A decades-old quarrel over a defining event in computer history — the creation of the program that propelled Microsoft to dominance — has suddenly become a legal dispute that could lead to a public trial.
What a muddled tale that is.