This piece from Slate/MSN just makes you wonder about what corporations are thinking sometimes.
Telcom giant SBC is sending cease-and-desist letters to hundreds of Web site operators, accusing them of infringing on an SBC patent covering "frames," those stationary menus that innumerable Web sites employ to help users navigate sites. SBC says individual infringers owe it licensing payments ranging from $527 to $16.6 million per year. Does SBC own such a patent? And if so, how was it allowed to patent such a seemingly obvious feature?
The answer to the first question is yes. SBC secured its first frame patent in 1999 and a second in 2002.
Now if this is in fact true as the author of this article suggests, and I have no reason to disbelieve him, wouldn't the IETF or some other governing body who wrote the standards for frames also have a claim, or the right to choose not to exercise a claim, and let the idea pass into the public domain?
Patents are not written in stone, and many are successfully overturned amid legal challenges. In 1994, for example, the USPTO overturned a patent it had given to Compton's New Media, which covered a broad technique whereby data is retrieved from CD-ROMs. Had it been allowed to stand, the patent might have squelched the development of digital media since potential competitors would have owed Compton's millions in licensing fees.
Given the lead in the article about SBC sending 'cease and desist' letters to folks with deep-pockets to intimidate everyone else into paying (they hope), I can just see them using the only piece of legislation I know of, more un-American than the Patriot Act, the DMCA to start prosecuting/seeking damages against web sites/developers for not coughing up royalties/license fees.
With any luck at all either a court will rule against SBC or SBC might realize this is a public relations disaster for them, and magnanimously "give" the patents to the W3C or some other organization and grab about a million lines of free copy in the trades, etc...
Or Corporate Greed might set in as is more likely, and they will go after everyone on principle, until they realize that "frames" are not the be all and end all of web pages, or as is more likely, as soon as they get to be real hard-asses someone builds a better mousetrap. Are they going after Tables next as some kind of "reverse engineering" to thwart frames?
