PATNEWS: British Telecom asserting 1989 patent claiming HTML? (fwd)

Tue Jun 20 16:47:55 EDT 2000

Here is comprehensive coverage from Gregory Aharonian of patent-news...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gregory Aharonian <srctran at world.std.com>
To: patent-news at world.std.com

!20000620  British Telecom asserting 1989 patent claiming HTML?

    Over three years ago, I sent out the following PATNEWS:

    DATE[19970114
    TITLE[Fax patent lawsuit is another Freeny patent
    TEXT[
    I just heard from one of my readers that the patent in question with
    regards to the lawsuit against the fax machine industry is patent
    4,837,797, and surprise, surprise, it is another patent originally
    owned by Charles Freeny, the inventor of the patent behind the E-data
    lawsuits.

    Are these cases a portent of the future, where older technology chunk
    patents are used to go after entire market sectors?  For example,
    given the broad way some of these companies are interpreting their
    claims (though in this regard, most are amateurs compared to IBM),
    if they were so inclined and managed to remember, British Telecom
    has a patent that with a few legal gymnastics could be read to cover
    all uses of Web pages.  I am thinking of approaching BT to see if I
    can buy out rights to their patent :-)

Thereafter I hinted about the patent in talks I gave, though given that
there are British Telecom people getting PATNEWS, I always wondered why
they never emailed me asking which patent I had in mind.  I never really
pursued the issue, or tried to exploit knowledge of the patent, partly
because I didn't think they would sell me the patent and that I doubt
anyone would want to pay the really big bucks to try to bust the patent,
and partly because there are some biotech patents horrendous and obscene
in their implication whose knowledge I intend to exploit for much bigger
stakes (the biotech industry has multiple heads stuck in the sand).

    Well apparently the answer is that intellectual property matters at
British Telecom are very very deliberate, because the newswires this week
are all abuzz that British Telecom has decided to assert the patent.  The
patent, 4873662, "Information handling system and terminal apparatus
therefor" (abstract and claim below), basically claims the method of
sending out information in two blocks - the first block has the text of
the current page, and the second block has display formatting information
for the text in the first block plus links to other pages of text and
formatting information.

    As I implied in 1997, with a little legal gymnastics, these claims can
be interpreted to read on HTML coding and HTML links, the most fundamental
aspects of the original Web.  What compounds the potential threat of these
claims is the priority dates.  The patent issued in 1989, making it
assertable for (Internet) years to come, though it has a priority date of
July 1977, and cites a good amount of prior art for that date.  In short,
this patent will be real tricky to bust (i.e. anyone calling me to do a
bust, have a lot of zeros at your disposable :-)

    The original assignee was the General Post Office, which was later
split in two to the UK Post Office and British Telecommunications, and
based on their original work with videotext such as the Prestel system.

    Here are some links and excerpts from current newwires articles:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/11450.html

    Dr Ken Gray, chairman of Scipher, told AFX: "On behalf of BT we are
    attempting to licence (hyperlink technology), and inviting licences
    to be taken out by ISPs in the States."

    A spokesman for BT said: "We patented the principle of the hyperlink
    in the mid-70s when people were still wearing kipper ties and flares."
    He said the company was only going to pursue ISPs and not individual
    users.

(Note: Scipher was formerly the Thorm-EMI research lab.  But what are
kipper ties?)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_798000/798475.stm

    Ben Goodger, a technology and intellectual property expert from
    law firm Willoughby and Partners, said BT would be unwise to try
    and enforce its claim. "The commercial damage and unpopularity
    which BT would bring on its head if it tried to enforce this patent
    would be incalculable," he said. 

    Mr Goodger said in the 1980s Unisys tried to enforce its claim to
    a technology which was widely used to compress image files.  He
    said Unisys was vilified for its action at the time especially
    when it started charging $5000 per licence.  Now over 2000 companies
    have paid Unisys for a licence to use the compression system known
    as the LZW algorithm. 

http://www.ft.com/ (Financial Times 20 Jun 2000) NEWSCAN:

    The patent, which expires in 2006, was buried among 15,000 other
    global patents owned by the telecom giant until it was rediscovered
    "a few years ago" during a routine review of the company's
    intellectual property.

    The company added that it has spent the last two years researching
    its claim to the technology to make sure it holds up in court. "It
    is not something you want to shoot from the hip on," it said.

(Note: they should have hired me in 1997 to help with their routine review
:-)  Nice to see they spent some time researching the validity of its
patent - not enough patent assertors do so.)

So this should be a very interesting to follow, with British Telecom in a
position to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing fees.

Greg Aharonian
Internet Patent News Service
                              ====================
4873662
Information handling system and terminal apparatus therefor
Issued/Filed Dates: Oct. 10, 1989 / Aug. 15, 1980 (cont. from July 1977)

Abstract:
    Informaton for display at a terminal apparatus of a computer is stored
in blocks the first part of which contains the information which is
actually displayed at the terminal and the second part of which contains
information relating to the display and which may be used to influence the
display at the time or in response to a keyboard entry signal. For
example, the second part of the block could include information for
providing the complete address of an another block which would be selected
by the operation of a selected key of the keyboard. The second part of the
block could alternatively influence the format and/or color of the display
at the terminal. When a block is read from the store of the computer the
second part is retained in another store which may be located in the
terminal or in the computer itself or perhaps both. The invention is
particularly useful in reducing the complexity of the operating protocol
of the computer.

What is claimed is:                                                         
    1. A digital information storage, retrieval and display system  
comprising:                                                                 

    a central computer means in which plural blocks of information are
stored at respectively corresponding locations, each of which locations is
designated by a predetermined address therein by means of which a block
can be selected, each of said blocks comprising a first portion containing
information for display and a second portion containing information not
for display but including the complete address for each of plural other
blocks of information;

    plural remote terminal means, each including (a) modem means for
effecting input/output digital data communication with said central
computer means via the telephone lines of a telephone network, (b) local
memory for locally storing digital data representing at least the first
portion of the selected block of information received via said modem means
from the central computer, (c) display means for visually displaying such
a locally stored first portion of a block of information and (d) key pad
means connected to communicate data to at least said modem means for
manual entry of keyed digital data; and

    further memory means being provided as a part of said central computer
means for receiving and storing said second portion of the block of
information selected by a particular terminal means in response to the
selection of the block and when its respective first portion is
transmitted to that terminal means for display, said central computer
means utilizing keyed digital data from that particular terminal means of
less extent than any one of said complete addresses for another block of
information but nevertheless uniquely indicative of one of the complete
addresses contained in said portion of the block of information which
contains the first portion then being displayed by that particular
terminal means for selectively accessing the part of said further memory
means associated with that particular terminal means and for supplying the
complete address of the next block of information which is to be retrieved
for that particular terminal means and utilized for display purposes at
that terminal means.