IP: BT claims patent on the hyperlink?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: "RV Head" <4whp () home com>
> To: "Farber () Cis Upenn Edu" <farber () cis upenn edu>
> Cc: "Law & Policy of Computer Communications" <CYBERIA-L () LISTSERV AOL COM>
> Subject: BT claims patent on the hyperlink?
> Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 18:21:53 -0500
>
> http://www.idg.net/crd_idgsearch_732742.html
>
> BT, Prodigy U.S. hyperlink patent trial date set
>
>
> Laura Rohde, IDG News Service\London Bureau
> November 20, 2001, 11:06
>
>
> LONDON - A court date was set Monday in the lawsuit brought by British
> Telecommunications PLC (BT) against U.S.-based Prodigy Communications Corp.
> for patent infringement through the ISP's (Internet service provider)
> unauthorized use of the hyperlink.
>
> Last year, BT said it had discovered that it holds U.S. patent 4,873,662 for
> the invention of hyperlink technology used on the Internet, and on Dec. 13,
> 2000, the London-based telecommunication company filed suit in federal court
> in White Plains, New York.
>
> In the latest pretrial hearing for the case, a court date was set for Feb.
> 11 through Feb. 12, 2002, with Judge Mark Fox presiding, a federal court
> deputy said Tuesday.
>
> BT and Prodigy could not immediately be reached for comment, though BT in
> the past has declined to discuss the details of the case except to say that
> it is seeking "appropriate reparations" from Prodigy.
>
> Early in 2000, after discovering in a routine check that it owned the patent
> for the hyperlink, BT wrote to 17 U.S. ISPs, including Prodigy, asking them
> to pay for the privilege of using the technology through licensing
> agreements. The suit filed against Prodigy, which claims to be the largest
> consumer DSL (digital subscriber line) ISP in the U.S. as well as the first
> commercial ISP in the U.S., is the first suit BT has filed to protect its
> hyperlink patent.
>
> BT owns what it calls the Hidden Page patent, which was filed in the U.S. in
> 1976, granted in 1989 and isn't due to expire until 2006, giving the company
> the intellectual property rights to hyperlink technology. Hyperlinks connect
> text, images, and other data on the Internet in such a way as to allow a
> user to click on a highlighted object on a Web page in order to bring up an
> associated item contained elsewhere on the Web.
>
> Last year, BT also hired U.K.-based technology development and licensing com
> pany Scipher PLC to broker licensing agreements with the U.S. ISPs. BT said
> that it would not pursue patent claims with individual users, as it would
> "not be practical."
>
> Tim Berners-Lee, is generally credited as leading an effort, with Robert
> Cailliau, to write the underlying protocols -- including HTTP, or hypertext
> transfer protocol -- for what later came to be known as the World Wide Web,
> at the CERN nuclear research center in Switzerland in the late 1980s.
> Berners-Lee's work was based on, among other things, earlier work carried
> out by Ted Nelson, who is generally acknowledged to have coined the term
> hypertext in his 1965 book, "Literary Machines."
>
> BT, in London, can be reached at http://www.bt.com/. Prodigy, in Austin,
> Texas, can be contacted at http://www.prodigy.com/. Scipher, in Middlesex,
> England, can be contact at http://www.scipher.co.uk/. The World Wide Web
> Consortium (W3C) can be contacted at http://www.w3.org/. The Hidden Page
> patent can be accessed here

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