Eolas might just sue every last, lousy company in creation

[ Thanks to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols for this link. ]

"Eolas, like other patent trolls, has taken an obvious idea, somehow managed to con the U.S. PTO (Patent and Trademark Office) into giving it a patent, and is now suing Adobe Systems, Google, Yahoo, Apple, eBay and Amazon.com. Oh, and it's also suing Blockbuster, Frito-Lay, Office Depot, Sun, Playboy. (Playboy!?) and 10 other companies.

"Eolas claims that these companies have all violated its U.S. Patent No. 5,838,906 ('906 patent) and U.S. Patent No. 7,599,985 ('985 patent). And, as these patents are written, they have all violated them.

"It would be hard not to. You see, the '906 patent broadly covers any mechanism that can be used to embed an object within a Web document."

Complete Story

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