AJAX patent threat to giants under the hammer
IP 101 for Web 2.0
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A patent scheduled for sale next month in San Francisco could threaten some of the biggest players on the internet leading Web 2.0.
Listed in Ocean Tomo's spring auction catalog as lot number seven, patent number 6,418,462: "Discloses methods allowing clients to perform tasks through a sideband communication channel, in addition to the main communication channel between a client and server".
In supporting documentation it is claimed that pretty much the whole of the web uses this method to operate AJAX-based applications. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and eBay are identified as among those whose products "potentially" infringe on the patent.
Singled out are AJAX mashups including Google Maps and Gmail, and Microsoft "Live" - the latter being a broad and slightly nebulous category. Also in the frame are Amazon's S3 and EC2 and clusters from Microsoft, VMware and Oracle. eBay's Skype, Napster and Microsoft's Groove are also listed as potentially infringing on the patent in P2P.
The claim centers on the way AJAX uses background processes: "Most significantly, the patent is directed to the core concept fundamental to AJAX: extra data requested from the server may be loaded in the background, through an asynchronous data request channel, thereby ensuring that there is no interference with the display and behavior of the existing page".
Clearly if the claim is valid, the value of the patent - filed in 1999 and issued in 2002 - is substantial. It will be interesting to see who bids and what the new owner does with it. One possible option on the table is to prosecute claimed infringers, cashing in through the US courts.
Ocean Tomo auction president Andrew Ramer said simply in a statement ownership of this patent presented a "unique opportunity" to secure the existing development efforts and provide "long-term competitive advantage" for developers, internet companies and sites in AJAX and Web 2.0.®
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COMMENTS
Software Patents
I've been 'in' IT software dev. for 22 years and I remember the 'first' furores over patents... the whole thing is just a pathetic exercise; enough developers will do things the same way given enough time, time and time again. Why *penalise* everybody for having the same good ideas, almost makes you wanna be dumb.
Hey M$, got any vacancies ? :)
Prior art from the 1980's: NeWS
You people who think Microsoft "pioneered" AJAX in the 1990s don't know your history, and obviously haven't been working with computers and user interfaces and networking for very long. Microsoft does not deserve the credit you're giving them for inventing AJAX.
Long before he developed Java, James Gosling developed a window system called "NeWS" (for "Network extensible Window System".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeWS
NeWS was originally called "SunDew", and the first paper he published about it was in Methodology of Window Management: Proceedings of an Alvey Workshop at Cosener's House, Abingdon, UK, April 1985 (Focus on Computer Graphics).
http://www.amazon.com/Methodology-Window-Management-Proceedings-Workshop/dp/3540161163
The name of the article was "SunDew: a distributed and extensible window system".
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=23810.23814
NeWS was just like AJAX, but with PostScript instead of JavaScript for programming, with PostScript instead of DHTML for drawing, and with PostScript instead of XML for representing data.
The many user interface toolkits and distributed applications we developed with NeWS totally predate and invalidate any AJAX patents.
http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/101
http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/102
http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/98
http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/97
http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/93
http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/92
http://www.donhopkins.com/drupal/node/64
I demonstrated NeWS to the director of Microsoft Research, so of course they knew about it. But I'm sure the would be happy to take all the undeserved credit for inventing AJAX.
-Don
Patents should be for protection, not for sale
It is time that all Patent Offices published patent applications for software instead of shielding speculative 'inventions' behind a system originally designed to protect physical artifacts.
This current patent issue has the nasty smell of institutionalised cyber squatting and someone as big as MS could easily buy the patent and use it to screw everyone else.
Time for change.
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