Not sure if this was posted yet.
" Patent Troll Claims Ownership of Interactive Web ? And Might Win "
This week, though, Tyler is the site of a remarkable battle over the history of the World Wide Web ? a trial that could affect the future of e-commerce. The federal courthouse downtown is packed to the brim with dozens of lawyers, representing the world?s biggest internet companies, including Yahoo, Amazon, Google and YouTube.
A succession of pioneers of the early web ? including the web?s father, Tim Berners-Lee himself ? have flown in from around the world to denounce two software patents they believe threaten the future of web innovation. East Texas has transformed itself into something of a haven for patent suits over the past several years, but by any standard, the trial now underway is an extraordinary circus of dark suits.
How did all the trouble start?
Michael Doyle, a low-profile Chicago biologist, claims that it was actually he and two co-inventors who invented ? and patented ? the ?interactive web? before anyone else, while they were employed by the University of California back in 1993. Doyle argues that a program he created at the UC?s San Francisco campus, which allowed doctors to view embryos over the nascent World Wide Web, was the first program that allowed users to interact with images inside of a web browser window. The defendants hotly contest that, saying that it was programs like Pei-Yuan Wei?s pioneering Viola that first offered this functionality.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...t-troll-trial/