A company that won a $565 million patent-case judgment before settling with Microsoft in 2007 has filed suit against 22 more companies, alleging they also violated the same patent.Eolas Technologies holds patents on technology that allows Web sites browsers to include embedded media and applications. In its complaint (PDF) filed Tuesday, Eolas named as offenders Adobe, Amazon, Argosy Publishing, Blockbuster, CDW, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, Go Daddy, Google (including YouTube), J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase, New Frontier Media – shall I keep going? – Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises, Rent-a-Center, Staples, Sun Microsystems, Texas Instruments and Yahoo.
Most likely, they have the deepest pockets among companies on a much longer list.
"We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in Web pages tapping into powerful remote resources," Eolas Chairman Michael Doyle said in a statement sent to seattlepi.com. "Profiting from someone else's innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what's fair."
The Tyler, Texas-based company is seeking permanent injunctions, triple damages and attorney fees.
Eolas, a spin-off of the University of California, won its high-profile case against Microsoft in 2004, securing a $565 million judgment before Microsoft appealed. The case bounced around the appeal process before the companies settled in 2007 for a confidential amount of money.
The University of California, however, disclosed its piece of the settlement: $30.4 million.
The suit against Microsoft, filed in 1999, alleged the Redmond-based company violated patent No. 5,838,906. But Tuesday's lawsuit adds another patent to the mix – one the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just granted on Tuesday morning.
Eolas didn't waste any time.
"Obviously, we intended to file as soon as the patent was issued," said Eolas' attorney, Mike McKool of the McKool Smith firm in Dallas. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas – a known haven for small patent holders that sue larger companies.
The '906 patent covers the ability of Web browsers to act as platforms for interactive embedded applications. The new patent, No. 7,599,985, expands on the '906 patent, covering Web sites' use of plug-ins and AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) to embed applications, according to the Eolas announcement.
After one rejection, Eolas' '906 patent has withstood three USPTO reviews – most recently in February – and remains valid.
During the case against Microsoft, opponents said the lawsuit would destroy the future of the World Wide Web by limiting the use of Eolas' patented technology. Though Microsoft changed parts of Internet Explorer in response to the case, that never happened.
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