Sunday, 9th April 2006
IE ActiveX DoomsDay
Microsoft is moving full steam ahead with a plan to permanently modify the way Internet Explorer renders multimedia content on Web pages.
The IE update, which results from a multimillion-dollar patent spat with Eolas Technologies, changes the way the browser handles ActiveX controls and could have a significant impact on how online advertising and streaming media content is delivered over the Internet.
The start-stop-start-stop decision comes more than two years after Microsoft originally warned that the Eolas court ruling would force certain technical modifications to IE that would significantly disrupt the display of multimedia content on the browser
Is Microsoft at fault ? ... Definitely !!!
What you should be asking Microsoft,"Why aren't you taking the license?"Instead Microsoft is asking the industry, to do billions upon billions of dollars of re-engineering. Just think of all the Fortune 1000 information systems built entirely upon ActiveX technology and Web pages. The companies that have sunk that money into developing those in-house systems are now being asked to re-engineer all that, and why? Because Microsoft doesn't want to pay for the licensing the patent. The industry seems to be playing right into their hands.
History of the CaseNovember 1998 - Eolas Technologies Inc files the patentEolas Technologies Inc filed and subsequently now holds the license to a patent on the embedding and invoking of interactive applications, such as plug-ins and applets, in Web browsers.
The patent filed as U.S. Patent No. 5,838,906 also known as the '906 patent' and describes ways that a Web browser can use external applications.
September 1999 - Eolas files suit against Microsoft
Eolas, which filed its suit against Microsoft in 1999, is a one-man company - former University of California researcher Michael Doyle, who co-developed the technology in the patent. The company was spun off from the University of California. Eolas claims it covers the way Microsoft Internet Explorer uses plug-ins.
August 2003 - Microsoft loses case and announces changes to IE
Microsoft lost a $521 million patent-infringement jury verdict in the case to Chicago-based Eolas and the University of California.
It has since announced changes to its Internet Explorer browser that it says sidesteps the patent's method for embedding and invoking interactive applications such as plug-ins and applets from Web browsers.
Microsoft proposed the change to IE in an attempt to avoid having to pay license fees to Eolas. Other browsers such as Opera, Mozilla Firefox and Apple's Safari might have to implement a similar change to avoid infringement, or to license Eolas' patent.
October 2003 - W3C protests against the patent, claims prior art
The World Wide Web Consortium is seeking a reexamination of a Web browser patent that it says threatens to undermine the smooth operation of the Web.
The W3C claims that the publications describe the EMBED tag in HTML+ in an identical way to the EMBED tag in the patent. Beyond the claims of prior art, the W3C also cited the far-flung impact of the patent as a reason for it to be re-examined. Prior art is a legal term referring to whether an invention existed prior to the filing of a patent.
As well as Web and software developers being forced to modify Web pages and applications at a considerable expense, millions of Web pages that are no longer being actively maintained but that have historical significance could be broken because no one is responsible for covering the cost of changing them. A decision to change the browsers, rather than to license the patent, would force a disruption in the normal functioning of millions of existing unmaintained web pages that use multimedia plug-ins, and would cause ripple effects through the web, causing re-design of tens of millions web pages that are currently being maintained.
January 2004 - Verdict upheld against Microsoft, Microsoft scraps plans for modified IE
Following the W3C protest, a reexamination of the patent's validity was started and Microsoft appealed the verdict. A federal court however upheld a jury's $521 million verdict against Microsoft Corp.
In the high-profile Web browser patent infringement case, Microsoft in August had said it would change the way the Web browser and Windows XP handle Web pages that use its ActiveX Controls, its version of an applet.
The modified version of IE was expected to be out early this year. Microsoft scrapped those plans and vowed to vigorously appeal the $521 million patent infringement ruling.
March 2005 - Some hope for Microsoft
The District Court judgment in favor of Eolas was overturned, though the infringement and damages parts of the case were upheld. The appeals court ruled that the two Viola-related exhibits that had been thrown out of the original trial needed to be shown to a jury in a retrial.
September 2005 - PTO upholds the patent's validity
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected an attempt to invalidate the patent, despite fears that the patent and others like it could lead to Internet chaos. The decision is a serious blow to Microsoft's hopes of avoiding paying millions in damages to Eolas Technologies Inc. and being forced to redesign its flagship Web browser.
October 2005 - Big blow to Microsoft
The Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear Microsoft's appeal, leaving intact the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of Eolas.
December 2005 - Microsoft announces ActiveX DoomsDay
Microsoft announces and notified ActiveX control vendors, OEM partners and content providers of the coming changes, which will be included in all future releases of Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
February 2006 - IE update made available for users
Microsoft modifies its web browser to side-step Eola Patents. All ActiveX controls will now need to be "activated" before they can be interacted with. Users will need to click once on an ActiveX control before being able to use its interface. Allthough the update was made available, it was made part of a required security update in which case its effects would be far reaching.
April 11 - ActiceX Doomsday
Microsoft announces that the changes will be included in a cumulative IE security update that's on tap to ship on April 11. A workaround for web developers is to load in the object/embed tag from an external Javascript file using one of the methods described in the Microsoft developers site.
Posted by Nikhil on Sunday, 9th April 2006 in TechnoBabble | Work
Comments
What next, patent "double click"? Btw, you might also want to read: http://www.paulgraham.com/softwarepatents.html
Posted by: Rajesh Goli on Monday 10th of April 2006 08:24:37 AM