Wang Suit Dismissed

The suit is described here. The patent in question is described here.

On May 6, Leonie Brinkema, District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, dismissed all patent claims raised by Wang against Netscape and AOL.

Believing that the web wasn't videotex, and that a videotex patent should only apply to videotex systems, Netscape brought a summary judgment motion, arguing that there was no need for a trial because there were no disputed facts and, under the applicable law, the patent was not infringed. The judge agreed, ruling that the videotex system covered by the patent was "generically and fundamentally different" from web browsers. In doing so, the court rejected Wang's attempt to extend their patent to cover web pages. Relevant differences included

web pages vs. videotex frames
the web vs. videotex central suppliers
web server access vs. videotex central supplier connections

There were other points which distinguished the web and web pages from the patented system, but the court didn't address them because there was no need to.

Wang may appeal. We inside mozilla.org aren't sure how that works. If anything crops up, it'll be noted here.

Since so much of mozilla.org's source came from Netscape's allegedly infringing product, we've been keenly interested in the case and we're pretty happy with the news (even though we expected it all along).

Contributions of the netizens

You guys blew away our lawyers. Tons of stuff came in, and good stuff. We'll get with our lead attorney and get some real data here. Stay tuned if you're interested.

It's really clear that the net can be an invaluable resource in fighting bogus claims. Anything done to reduce abuse of IP law has got to be good.

Some FAQs

Several requests have come in for case numbers, URLs for the actual court filings, and related things, and we anticipate people asking for URLs for transcripts of the decision. If we can get any of that, it'll get posted here.

Case No.: The case is Civil Action No. 97-1628-A in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division.
Transcript: I saw a transcript of the May 6 motions hearing which ended in the dismissal of the case. It's 51 pages and I don't have softcopy. Largely, it referes to arguments previously presented, and spends some time referring to a Federal Circuit case referred to as Vitronics which "is the case which guides the Court's analysis in construing the terms of the patent...." They talked about Prestel, NAPLPS and SCEPTRE. Plenty of further motions were dismissed as moot, without reference to their validity; the Court said that deciding moot issues wasn't a good use of judicial resources.
The Order is only a page and a half. I'm pretty sure I can get that OCRed; stay tuned.