Texas Jury Smacks Down Landmark Shakedown Attempt by Infamous Patent Troll

Tim "I helped invent the Internet" Berners-Lee testified before a federal jury earlier this week, tearing into the validity of a key patent Eolas Technologies' was exploiting to sue multiple web companies for $600 million. He must have been persuasive because the court took mere hours to reach its decision.

Eolas Technologies, an infamous patent troll firm with previous wins over Microsoft and others, had named over a dozen web companies in its 2009 suit alleging that the sites had infringed upon Eolas' "Interactive Web" patent, awarded the year before, and claiming ownership over online video, image rotation and search auto-complete.


Berners-Lee testified to the potentially catastrophic and chilling effects this patent would have if upheld—which they somehow were by the USPTO. Pei-Yuan Wei, inventor of the Viola browser, and Dave Raggett, creator of the embed tag also testified since the patent in question performed precisely the same function as their creations as well as others that were already widely known, if not already claimed.
