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  <title>World Wide Web Consortium Presents the US Patent Office with
  Evidence Invalidating Eolas Patent</title>
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<h1>World Wide Web Consortium Presents US Patent Office with Evidence
Invalidating Eolas Patent</h1>

<h2>W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee urges USPTO Director to review prior art,
take action</h2>

<p></p>
<dl>
  <dt><strong>Contact Americas, Australia --</strong></dt>
    <dd>Janet Daly, &lt;<a href="mailto:janet@w3.org">janet@w3.org</a>&gt;,
      +1.617.253.5884 <em>or</em> +1.617.253.2613</dd>
  <dt><strong>Contact Europe --</strong></dt>
    <dd>Marie-Claire Forgue, &lt;<a
      href="mailto:mcf@w3.org">mcf@w3.org</a>&gt;, +33.492.38.75.94</dd>
  <dt><b>Contact Asia --</b></dt>
    <dd><dl>
        <dt>Yasuyuki Hirakawa &lt;<a
        href="mailto:yasuyuki@w3.org">yasuyuki@w3.org</a>&gt;,
        +81.466.49.1170</dt>
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<p>(also available in <a href="28-906-briefing.html.fr"
hreflang="fr" title="French version">French</a>)</p>
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<p><a href="/">http://www.w3.org</a> -- 29 October 2003 -- The World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C), the global standard-setting body for the Web, has presented
the United States Patent and Trademark Office with prior art establishing
that US Patent No. 5,838,906 (the '906 patent) is invalid and should
therefore be re-examined in order to eliminate this unjustified impediment to
the operation of the Web. The W3C is urging US Under Secretary of Commerce
for Intellectual Property James E. Rogan to initiate a re-examination of the
patent because the critical prior art was neither considered at the time the
patent was initially examined and granted, nor during recent patent
infringement litigation.</p>

<p>In an unprecedented step, Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of
the Web, sent a <a href="27-rogan.html">letter</a> today to Under Secretary
Rogan requesting that his office reinvestigate the matter. "W3C urges the
USPTO to initiate a reexamination of the '906 patent in order to prevent
substantial economic and technical damage to the operation of World Wide
Web," stated Berners-Lee. "The impact of this patent will be felt not only by
those who are alleged to directly infringe, but all whose web pages and
application rely on the stable, standards-based operation of browsers
threatened by this patent. In many cases, those who will be forced to incur
the cost of modifying Web pages or software applications do not even
themselves infringe the patent - assuming it is even valid."</p>

<p>The decision to contact the USPTO directly was made by W3C's <a
href="/2003/09/pag">HTML Patent Advisory Group</a>.</p>

<h3>The '906 Patent Affects Broad Range of Web Functionality</h3>

<p>The object embedding technology has been part of the HTML standard since
the early days of the Web. This feature, supposedly covered by the '906
patent, provides critical flexibility to Web browsers, and giving users
seamless access to important features that extend the browsers' capabilities.
Nearly every Web user today relies on plug-in applications that add services
such as streaming audio and video, advanced graphics and a variety of special
purpose tools.</p>

<p>Changes forced by the '906 patent will also have a permanent impact on
millions of historically important Web pages. In many cases, these pages
contain non-commercial content or older material that is not generating
revenue. As a result, there is no way to cover the cost of modifying those
pages to bring them into compliance with whatever changes are made in
response to the '906 patent.</p>

<h3>The '906 Patent has disruptive impact on established Web standards</h3>

<p>If the '906 patent remains in force, Web page authors who have followed
Web standards for embedding objects will face a need for additional work, as
browsers are re-engineered to avoid the patented features. Even though page
authors haven't violated the patent, they will still bear the cost of
rewriting Web pages or software applications, as browsers will no longer be
able to perform in the manner they once did.</p>

<h3>Critical, Previously Unreviewed Prior Art points to Invalidity of
'906</h3>

<p>The sole difference between the Web browser described in the '906 patent
and typical browsers that the patent itself acknowledges as prior art, is
that, with prior art browsers, the content is displayed in a new window,
whereas, with the '906 browser, the content is displayed in the same window
as the rest of the Web page. But that feature (i.e., displaying, or
embedding, content generated by an external program in the same window as the
rest of a Web page) was already described in the <a
href="301-filing.html">prior art filing</a> submitted by W3C.</p>

<h3>Commissioner should act given huge costs to the Web and prior art not
considered during the initial patent examination</h3>

<p>The '906 patent will cause cascades of incompatibility to ripple through
the Web. Yet, it's not too late to remedy this problem. The material W3C
presented in its Section 301 filing clearly establishes that the '906 patent
is invalid. W3C believes that the Commissioner of the Patent and Trademark
Office can and should order a re-examination of the '906 patent.</p>

<h2>About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]</h2>

<p>W3C -- an international organization made up of nearly 400 Members from
industry, academe, users' organizations and public policy experts -- is
responsible for setting the core technical standards for the World Wide Web.
Since its launch by Tim Berners-Lee, Web inventor, in 1994, W3C has led the
development of Web standards and, with these standards, established the basic
architecture for the World Wide Web. W3C has produced nearly 60 technical
Recommendations ranging from the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and the
Extensible Markup Language (XML) to digital signatures, Cascading Style
Sheets (CSS), guidelines for Web accessibility, and the Platform for Privacy
Preferences (P3P). It is jointly run by MIT Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory (MIT CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research
Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France
and Keio University in Japan. For more information see <a
href="/">http://www.w3.org/</a></p>
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