Editing Eolas (section)

==Patents==
<!-- Deleted image removed: [[Image:ViolaWWW plotDemo.gif|thumb|right|ViolaWWW, developed before the Eolas patent filing, embedding an interactive graphical plotter in a web page]] -->
{{Expand section|date=October 2007}}
US patent 5,838,906,<ref>{{cite patent|country=US|number=5838906|pubdate=1998-11-17|title=Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document|assign1=[[The Regents of the University of California]]|inventor1-last=Doyle|inventor1-first=Michael D.|inventor2-last=Martin|inventor2-first=David C.|inventor3-last=Ang|inventor3-first=Cheong S.}}</ref> titled "Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document," was filed on October 17, 1994 and granted on November 17, 1998.

In Autumn 2003, the inventor of the World Wide Web and the Director of the [[World Wide Web Consortium|W3C]] Consortium Tim Berners-Lee wrote to the Under Secretary of Commerce, asking for this patent to be invalidated, in order to "eliminate this major impediment to the operation of the Web". Leaders of [[Open-source model|Open Source]] Community sided with Microsoft in fighting the patent due to its threat to the free nature of the Web and to the basic established [[HTML]] standards. The specific concerns of having one company (Eolas) controlling a critical piece of the Web framework were cited.

In March 2004, the [[United States Patent and Trademark Office]] (USPTO) re-examined and initially rejected the patent. Eolas submitted a rebuttal in May 2004. On September 27, 2005, the USPTO upheld the validity of the patent. The PTO ruling rejected the relevance of Pei Wei's Viola code to the Eolas patent. According to the University of California press release, "In its 'Reasons for Patentability/Confirmation' notice, the patent examiner rejected the arguments for voiding UC's previously approved patent claims for the Web-browser technology as well as the evidence presented to suggest that the technology had been developed prior to the UC innovation. The examiner considered the Viola reference the primary reference asserted by Microsoft at trial as a prior art publication and found that Viola does 'not teach nor fairly suggest that instant 906 invention, as claimed.'"<ref name="ucpr">{{cite press release
 |publisher   = University of California
 |date        = 2005-09-28
 |title       = U.S. Patent Office reaffirms University's Web-browser technology patent
 |url         = http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/2005/sep28.html
 |access-date  = 2009-10-08
 |url-status     = dead
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20091011223032/http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/2005/sep28.html
 |archive-date = 2009-10-11
}}</ref>

Eolas was granted a second patent in October 2009 related to the same technology.<ref>{{cite patent|country=US|number=7599985|pubdate=2009-10-06|title=Distributed hypermedia method and system for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document|assign1=[[The Regents of the University of California]]|inventor1-last=Doyle|inventor1-first=Michael|inventor2-last=Martin|inventor2-first=David|inventor3-last=Ang|inventor3-first=Cheong}}</ref><ref name="cnet-oct09">{{cite news
 | title = Eolas sues corporate giants over Web technology
 | first = Stephen
 | last = Shankland
 | url = http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-10368638-264.html
 | publisher = CBS Interactive
 | date = 2009-10-06
 | access-date = 2009-10-08
}}</ref>

After considering the evidence asserted at the 2012 trial, including Viola, the [[United States Patent and Trademark Office|US Patent Office]] granted Eolas a new patent in November 2015 with claims which generally cover cloud computing on the Web.<ref name="patent3">{{cite patent|country=US|number=9195507|pubdate=2015-11-24|title=Distributed hypermedia method and system for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document|assign1=Eolas Technologies Inc.|inventor1-last=Doyle|inventor1-first=Michael D.|inventor2-last=Martin|inventor2-first=David C.|inventor3-last=Ang|inventor3-first=Cheong S.}}</ref>

All of the above patents had expired by September 2017.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Doyle |first1=Michael D. |last2=Martin |first2=David C. |last3=Ang |first3=Cheong S. |title=Distributed hypermedia method and system for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document |url=https://patents.google.com/patent/US9195507B1/en?oq=US9195507+(B1) |access-date=25 July 2022 |date=24 November 2015}}</ref>