Earlier this month, I traveled to Tyler, Texas to cover the Eolas patent trial. Eolas is a patent-holding company, together with the University of California, filed a lawsuit against more than 20 companies claiming it owned patent rights to the entire “interactive” World Wide Web–essentially the whole modern web.
The four-part series published at Wired.com includes:
- An overview of the trial and its importance
- The testimony of Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web
- Closing arguments
- The jury’s verdict, which invalidated the two Eolas patents
It’s patent enforcement actions like this one that bring software patents into disrepute. While I’m not against the idea of patenting software, this particular patent litigation makes me think that maybe the ability to do so should be limited.