In February 1999, an unrecognized Eolas Company actually took Microsoft to court, accusing Microsoft of infringing the browser technology patent it developed that could embed interactive content on an Internet site. The Lion opened its mouth - claim 5 Billion dollars. After more than six years of marathon trials, the case was a few times overwhelming. The US Court of Appeal ruled that Microsoft lost the case, which means that Microsoft will pay Eolas Technologies 512 million in tort compensation fees.
The "magic" patent technology patent number in the hands of Eolas was 5,838,906, which was acquired by the company in November 1998. The patent content is: "The system that allows users of browser software to access and execute embedded application objects". In addition to ActiveX, Java's applet technology and Netscape's plug-in technology are also "originated" by this patent. Michael Eolas CEO and inventor of the patented technology also admitted that this patent covers several technologies on the market. However, Sun and Netscape did not become the defendants of the case, and Microsoft made a "big head."
Eolas said that Microsoft’s various software products infringe its patents and require the court to prohibit Microsoft’s production and sales of all infringing products, including the Windows operating system after Windows 95 and its bundled IE browser.
For Eolas, this "unreasonable demand" with a clear "blackmail" tendency, Microsoft has given a firm rejection. It also stated that Microsoft has developed a technology called ActiveX, which enables the content of a Web site to dynamically change based on information transmitted from a server or database to a browser, and has obtained a patent. And this requires the court to issue an instant ruling that the patent of Eolas is invalid, but this request was rejected.
In February 2004, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) made a preliminary ruling in favor of Microsoft: Eolas accused the patents involved in the Microsoft IE infringement case from being invalid. This result once let Microsoft rejoice, because this result may make it avoid paying high infringement fines, and may avoid rewriting some of its IE browser code. The W3C Forum of the Internet Standardization Organization also stands on the side of Microsoft in this lawsuit. The organization believes that once Microsoft loses the lawsuit, millions of pages will be affected.
In the face of this preliminary ruling, legal experts gave more sympathy to Eolas. Sure enough, one year later, the verdict was exactly the opposite.
Infringement is a fait accompli, and Microsoft started to write articles on fines. In court documents, Microsoft argued that 64% of the $521 million in revenue associated with the patented technology comes from computers sold overseas. These computers are manufactured, sold, and used entirely overseas, and should not be included in the compensation calculation. For this theory, Intel, Time Warner and AOL all strongly support it.
However, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in the United States apparently did not buy the accounts of these bosses. On March 2, 2005, the court ruled that the Microsoft-installed Microsoft software sold overseas was still protected by the U.S. Patent Act because the source of its software replication originated from the United States. For Microsoft's justification, on April 3rd, the Court of Appeal once again upheld the previous decision to compel Microsoft to pay for the sale of overseas software to the patent of the other company.
Although, 512 million US dollars for the big companies like Microsoft is not a big number, but in the face of more and more legal troubles, Microsoft obviously can not give up every effort to defeat the defeat.
