Forbes on Microsoft/Eolas

Recall that on remand in the Microsoft/Eolas case, the role of Wei's Viola browser both as prior art and as an uncited reference will be considered. Forbes emphasized different issues in a recent story.

from Forbes:

Now the issue is a March ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which threw out this $521 million verdict against Microsoft. A Pyrrhic victory--Gates' company forged ahead with an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on a technicality of the ruling that would leave it exposed to damages when the case goes back for further proceedings.

Here's why: The appeals court ruled that all foreign-made and sold computers on which Windows software has been installed by foreign manufacturers could infringe a U.S. patent--because the software was designed in the U.S. and because of the replication abroad of a single disk on which the software code had been recorded.

Microsoft fretted it would have to tweak aspects of its IE browser, making it unable to run some applets--application programs that uses the client's web browser to provide a user interface--on Web pages.

UPDATE:

Earlier discussion by
Nipper about a certain prior art patent (US 5,495,581) has come to the attention of the USPTO (in the re-exam) as a possible interference issue (if continuations of the '581 exist and an appropriate count can be drafted).
See also a post on the The Invent Blog on Nov. 7, 2005.