Brinta used our newssubmit to tell us about a rather ridiculous story (in my opinion that is) on BT owning the patent on hyperlinks and wanting people to pay for the use of this 'technology':
But a federal judge with a laptop on her desk warned that it may be difficult to prove that a patent filed in 1976, more than a decade before the World Wide Web's invention, somehow applies today.
"The language is archaic," Judge Colleen McMahon said Monday. "It's like reading Old English."
She said comparing a 1976 computer with a 2002 computer is like comparing a mastodon and a jet. And she suggested that the invention at issue "was already outmoded by the time it was patented" in 1989.
But Albert Breneisen, an attorney for British Telecom, insisted that "the basic structure of linking is covered by the patent." Before BT's technology, he said, a computer user had to know and enter the complete address of another page.
Do they really think people will pay for the use of hyperlinks? I don't think so... Read the full story on smh.com.au.
Source: smh.com.au
