Internet safe for another day

Oh, phew. In case you missed the story, a federal judge yesterday threw out BT's suit against Prodigy, the one in which BT claimed it owned a patent on the concept of hyperlinks.

BT claimed a patent issued in 1989, based on work done by an employee in the 1970s, gave it the right to levy a fee - or whatever it wanted to do - for every use of a hyperlink. The suit conveniently ignored the work on hyperlinks done well before the 1970s by such people as Vannevar Bush (See his famous essay As We Think)and Ted Nelson in the 1960s (come to think of it, Nelson is *still* working on the concept).

The judge ruled "no jury could find" that Prodigy had infringed the patent, which, thanks to the ruling, you don't have to pay to read here.

Contact Online Executive Editor Adam Gaffin

Archives