Man Claiming He Invented the Internet Sues 326
wiedzmin writes "A low-profile Chicago biologist, Michael Doyle, and his company Eola Technologies, who has once won a $521m patent lawsuit against Microsoft, claim that it was actually he and two co-inventors who invented, and patented, the "interactive web" before anyone else, back in 1993. Doyle argues that a program he created to allow doctors to view embryos over the early Internet, was the first program that allowed users to interact with images inside of a web browser window. He is therefore seeking royalties for the use of just about every modern interactive Internet technology, like watching videos or suggesting instant search results. Dozens of lawyers, representing the world's biggest internet companies, including Yahoo, Amazon, Google and YouTube are acting as defendants in the case, which has even seen Tim Berners-Lee testify on Tuesday."
Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's come to this now? How bad does it have to get before the entire system is scrapped?
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Man Claiming He Invented the Internet Sues
Al Gore is gonna be sooo mad...
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
It's come to this now? How bad does it have to get before the entire system is scrapped?
Unfortunately the same guy who claims he invented the internet also claims to have a patent on scrapping the patent system, so we'll never find out how bad it would have to get.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately for him, entering text with a keyboard was my idea (and I have a few friends who remember me saying it) so he owes me royalties for that patent petition!
Novelty still present under first to file (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately "first to file" means your honest, hard-won invention that benefits all mammalkind will be stolen by an eeval corpra$hun.
Only if an employee of said evil corporation invented a product or process equivalent to "your honest, hard-won invention" but filed a patent before you published it. You see, first to file doesn't scrap the requirement of novelty; it affects only patent vs. patent disputes. Defensive publication of how to build your invention remains a viable way to get your prior art on the record and preclude any patents. So "git" your source code out there.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Berners-Lee, one of the guys who actually invented the internet
Return your geek card. This is /., not Digg.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah, no...Lee invented the web, not the 'internet'. The internet has been around much, much longer than the 'web'.
I agree...hand in your geek card.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, Berners-Lee, one of the guys who actually invented the internet, and probably couldn't care any less about all the legal nonsense, has to get dragged into court to testify. What a waste of time for the poor guy.
It is upon this condition these sorts of Patent Troll suits prosper - when you don't show up the judge or jury is more than likely to rule against you.
IANAPL, but looking at that patent, I can name several technologies which existed before it, peforming parts of the same functions. Problem is, the companies which made those products are mostly out of business by now and what hardware isn't in the Computer Museum is in a landfill in China, where a lot of the old computers went to be scraped for gold and copper.
Re: (Score:3)
when you don't show up the judge or jury is more than likely to rule against you.
Sure, but in this case I think Lee is only being brought in as an expert witness, isn't he? He doesn't have to worry about any ruling. Still a waste of the man's time, in my opinion.
Re:Al Gore? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately the same guy who claims he invented the internet also claims to have a patent on scrapping the patent system, so we'll never find out how bad it would have to get.
This is silly. We all know that Al Gore invented the Internet!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_technology
This joke reminds me I need to go out in the field and beat a dead horse.
Re: (Score:3)
+1 Funny
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, looking at his patent claims, it's a lot more like he's patented the use of something like Applescript to let a browser control an external application. In fact in 1994 this was quite common in the Apple world, Applescript being introduced in 1991. In fact I think quite a few people were viewing medical imagery and multimedia (remember when that was a buzzword?) stored in "databases" like FileMaker and (ugh) 4th Dimension. It was commonplace stuff in the Apple environment while the Microsoft-centric world was still banging the Windows 3 rocks together (remember Windows for Workgroups?).
The web, however, was not commonplace in 1994, so he may well have been the first to file for the use of this technique with a browser. However the technique was so commonplace it would be hard to imagine that it was *original*, especially if he used a browser with the necessary IPC mechanisms built-in. Why else *would* they developers have made an Applescript-aware brower *but* to interact with other programs? If they wrote the browser themselves, then they might have a claim that an IPC-aware browser was a novel thing.
In any case, unless I'm mistaken the patent doesn't describe built-in multi-media capabilities, or multi-media capabilities through plug-ins. It covers controlling an external program with a browser.
I wish this guy success though. As you suggest, this will gore enough oxen that somebody with money will care that the system is broken.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish this guy success though. As you suggest, this will gore enough oxen that somebody with money will care that the system is broken.
Your folly is in assuming the cure won't be worse than the sickness.
Think about the parties involved here, and their past actions regarding patents and copyright. This does not bode well for the average creator.
Re: (Score:3)
If they wrote the browser themselves, then they might have a claim that an IPC-aware browser was a novel thing.
He would've been in a race with AMosaic [wikipedia.org], an Amiga web browser with an ARexx interface that allowed it to interact with other applications and scripts and which was publicly released on Christmas 1993.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
I lived through this. Apple got rejected from the enterprise market because (a) they had no interest in competing with cheap commodity hardware and (b) they acted as though they were doing their IT department advocates more than enough favors by letting them buy Apple stuff in the first place. They had an unnerving habit of pulling the rug out from under you too. God help you if you invested Apple's A/UX Unix (which was technically superb).
Apple's "corporate DNA" has always destined it for the consumer market.
As for their networking support, it was superb for the time. The only drawback was the implementation of LocalTalk over RS 422; it was a bus topology like thinnet but slower and without positive locking connectors. You can't compare Apple's built-in networking to Windows 3, because Windows 3 didn't have any. If you compare it to Novell, Novell had better file serving, directory services and scalability. Apple had better practically everything else, including UI (of course), P2P and service discovery.
As for VB, it was a primitive era in 1994 when the patent was filed. VB 3, the first version with the Jet engine, had only come out the year before and VB code monkeys were excited about the datagrid control. In any case you have no idea what I'm talking about. Applescript is an object oriented inter-application communication system. It makes no sense to compare it to VB (you want to look at HyperCard for that); it makes more sense to compare it to something like CORBA or SOAP, only it provided a standard scripting language in addition to a networkable common object model (AppleEvents). On the whole it was very similar to Javascript and DOM, only able to control things other than web browsers.
Don't get me wrong. I'm *not* a fan of Apple the company. I swore I'd never develop for another Apple platform again (although iOS is tempting) because of Apple indifference to developers and enterprise managers. But Apple sure has made some products that were ahead of their time.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
How bad does it have to get before the entire system is scrapped?
My guess: When patents for methods of political fundraising become popular (and begin to be litigated), we will begin to see fundamental change within the patent process.
Interested to see what the companies do... (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of the companies named has defendants have used patent laws to their advantage. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out, especially since Tim Berners-Lee, who is completely against software patents, is set to testify.
there has to be some statute of limitations... (Score:5, Informative)
I mean... if you file your claim decades after everyone was violating your patient isn't that your fault at a certain point?
I know big companies are basically forced to defend their trademark and copyrights or else risk that other people can do it with impunity. There's some requirement that you protest when this sort of thing happens.
So... shouldn't he have protested like... forever ago?
For the sake of argument, if his claims are all valid, they should be void now because he didn't act on them until now.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
That's only true with trademarks. Copyrights and patents have no such rule.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:there has to be some statute of limitations... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:there has to be some statute of limitations... (Score:5, Insightful)
RT(F)A -- Suit originally filed in 1999. Since the claim is specifically against image interaction, rather than simply hyperlinks, the timing is just about right.
That 1999 suit is long since over:
To those who follow high-profile tech litigation, the name Eolas may sound familiar. The company sued Microsoft back in 1999, winning a $521 million jury verdict in 2003 that shook the tech world. While that verdict was overturned on appeal, Microsoft ultimately settled rather than re-try the case.
So ultimately they lost the only case that went to court. By that time Microsoft could pay them to go away out of pocket change. That doesn't in any way validate their patent, which rejected the Eolas patent claims in re-exams. That was the state of things for a long long time.
So the entire web grew up in the interim after the rejection, but before the re-instatement. Everybody thought the way was cleared by the rejection.
Just as a side issue, Compuserve had the ability to share images over the web BEFORE there was even a WEB. Their suite even had image viewing back when it was strictly dial up. They introduced the GIF format in 1987, and digital porn was born two minutes later.
Compuserve was the first online service to offer Internet connectivity, albeit limited access, as early as 1989.
And another side note, consider this exercise:
Berners-Lee's argument against this patent, namely that unless the Eolas patent was invalidated it would cause the “disruption of global web standards” and cause “substantial economic and technical damage to the operation of the World Wide Web. is fairly weak if you ask me.
If Eolas didn't have valid patents the case should be thrown out on THAT fact alone! BUT, If they did have valid patents, then invalidating them SIMPLY because of the hardship those patents would inflict seems to me just one more proof of how essential those (supposedly) valid patents would be to the development of the web.
I throw that out in the interest of discussion only. I'm not aware if there is any case law that allows invalidating a patent JUST because it proves essential to development of the very product it patents.
(Note: this is about current law, not the world as it "should be").
Re: (Score:3)
[Compuserve] introduced the GIF format in 1987, and digital porn was born two minutes later.
I hope you don't mind, I'll be shamelessly repeating this quote for years to come.
Re: (Score:3)
It's nonsense; digital form long predates GIF. There was porn ASCII art.
Re:there has to be some statute of limitations... (Score:4, Interesting)
So, it seems there's a chance that waiting too long can invalidate your claims.
Compare with trademark law where you have to defend it whenever it may be seen to be infringed (see the case where Hoover corp lost the right to have the exclusive rights to the term "hoover"); the same doctrine should apply for patents. Of course, the whole patent system is a mess these days as it was designed in a different age with different industries. Scrapping patents isn't the solution as they provide valuable protection to inventors who put effort into designing something, but they're horribly abused by various parties.
Re:there has to be some statute of limitations... (Score:4, Informative)
While the Microsoft suit was underway, the company applied for a second patent, which it received on Oct. 6, 2009. The same day, Eolas filed suit — in East Texas — against more than 20 big companies
No limitations here.
Re:there has to be some statute of limitations... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you'd read the article, you'd see that there has been some back-and-forth with the patent office. Most of his claims were invalidated and some were then later reinstated. He had semi-successfully sued Microsoft, had the judgement overturned, and then later reached a settlement (undisclosed, but estimated to be in the realm of $100 million). Worth noting is that Microsoft was not allowed to present evidence of prior art at trial. Why that would be, I have no idea - I'm not a patent lawyer. In any event, in terms of this guy not acting on his claims, that's just an indictment of how slow the legal and patent processes move.
Certainly, there's no question that by the time his patent application was publicly published, much less granted, everything in there was in common use. Frankly, if you strip out all of the buzzwords like hypermedia, it boils down to something as simple as downloading and running a script. That's it. And there's plenty of prior art that existed in 1994 for all of the claims listed in the application.
Re: (Score:2)
Worth noting is that Microsoft was not allowed to present evidence of prior art at trial. Why that would be, I have no idea - I'm not a patent lawyer.
I'm not a lawyer or an American, but as I understand it (from previous discussions on Slashdot), in America you can only defend yourself by saying that you don't infringe the patent. If you want the patent declared invalid, you have to sue separately for invalidation (which Microsoft did) then appeal demanding that the original judgement is overturned. I believe that the US is the only place with this (frankly nuts) system.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not a lawyer or an American, but as I understand it (from previous discussions on Slashdot), in America you can only defend yourself by saying that you don't infringe the patent. If you want the patent declared invalid, you have to sue separately for invalidation (which Microsoft did) then appeal demanding that the original judgement is overturned. I believe that the US is the only place with this (frankly nuts) system.
Your understanding is incorrect. Submission of prior art is a standard part of patent litigation. I do not know specifically why it would have been disallowed in that case.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I believe the company is actually Eolas [wikipedia.org].
You're right, oops.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
signs of inflation (Score:4, Funny)
Bad post title (Score:5, Insightful)
"Internet" != "Interactive Web"
Why sensationalize this lawsuit? It's absurd enough on its own merit.
You have to be really braindead. (Score:5, Interesting)
So you not only sued Microsoft, you actually won 500 million. Regardless of whether this was a dick move on your part or not, good for you, you are now set for life (or 3).
Now why on Earth would you risk it all by going into litigation again?
Re:You have to be really braindead. (Score:5, Insightful)
He settled the MS suit, actually (for an unannounced amount, but in the millions at least). I would assume that, like many people who find themselves with undeserved money, he blew it all on private jets, hookers, and blow, and now is looking for more (rather than going back to work). Also, TFS doesn't mention it, but quite a few companies have already settled. This is (one of) the problems with the legal system: it's easier and cheaper for big companies just to pay a few million than actually do the right thing and blow these stupid patents right the hell up.
Re: (Score:2)
Let him succeed (Score:5, Insightful)
His patent is about as valid as 99.999% of all computer-related patents from the last 25 years. Maybe if he sues the entire planet into oblivion, someone will admit how screwed up software patents are.
Ah, how I love my afternoon fantasies...
Re:Let him succeed (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh no, he won't sue the entire planet. You see, most reasonable countries, like Europe, don't have software patents.
Re: (Score:3)
It was demoted in retaliation for all those annoying little twats who pipe up with "America is a Continent!" whenever someone used the name to refer to the U.S.
Hahahahaaa !!! (Score:2, Funny)
So the circus had finally started for REAL at last ...
Patent Lifespan? (Score:4, Interesting)
On a practical note, since this was an 'invention' in 1993, wouldn't the patent expire next year anyway (20 year patent life?) In that case, won't somebody like IBM just tie this up in the courts and give the lawyers something to chew on until it runs out anyway?
Re:Patent Lifespan? (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't matter to the courts if the patent expires during the course of the case. The damages, if legitimate, were done during the period the patent was active. He just won't accrue any additional damage once the patent expires.
Re: (Score:2)
So can it get tied up in court for a year? (Score:2)
Oh, please. (Score:2)
With his winnings from 2003 Microsoft lawsuit (Score:4, Insightful)
Kinda late ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Even if combining file transfer [ftp] and image scrolling is patent-legally considered "novel", there is the question of damages. 1993 patents ran out (in the US) in 2010, so he cannot get any ongoing damages.
Optaining "back-damages" would be highly dependant on legal procedure, but I doubt he would be entitled to [m]any if he did not inform the alleged infringers during the period of their alleged infringement. It's not like browser coders were hard to see, find or email. Just another troll.
Universities (Score:5, Insightful)
My god... (Score:2)
Trolling so hard... it's full of stars!
Dammit (Score:3)
Internet != Web, sheesh. The Internet was around long before Doyle or Sir Tim or whoever invented the Web in 1993.
You'd think editors might know that by now, even here on /.
Javascript / HTML (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I understanding the patent correctly in that it requires an external application to be infringing? So that something like ActiveX or QuickTime plugin would infringe, but pure HTML5 and Javascript (because there is no Interprocess Communication) would be non-infringing?
Based on the claims in this Patent, can anyone explain how Eolas is not in the right? I mean, I get that they didn't implement anything, but this was filed in 1994. It seems like anyone supporting the patent system would have to admit defeat on this (i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc). If you're generally against software patents, that seems like the only argument. I don't see anything obvious about this from 1994.
It seems like the ViolaWWW would have been prior art that nullified this patent, but apparently the claims were not clear enough?
Prior Usage. (Score:5, Informative)
There was also a Graphical BBS Engine called Roboboard and its upgrade Roboboard/FX
There were systems like Prodigy, and AOL which had images...
Prior art (Score:2)
Note that someone seems to be confusing the Internet with the World Wide Web, so I am not sure which he is claiming IPR on. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW) at CERN in 1989. The Internet dates at the latest to the start of the NSFNET (1985). Either way, this seems to indicate that a patent issued in 1993 may have some issues with prior art.
Re: (Score:2)
Having read FTA, he is claiming IPR on part of the interactive part of the web, the company seems like a pure troll (they make nothing), and he might, just might, win.
html (Score:2)
Hypertext had been around since the 1980's. Apple II hypercard [wikipedia.org]
anyone? There were many products before that.
Berners Lee released HTML by early 1991 [w3.org].
I hope he wins. (Score:3, Interesting)
He should win. Then finally it will become blatantly obvious that copyrights and patents must be abolished.
Re: (Score:2)
Copyrights have nothing to do with this lawsuit.
Re: (Score:3)
doesn't matter, they have hurt everybody plenty in every other way, and they will be used to destroy the Internet as well, SOPA was just the beginning.
Re: (Score:3)
Wrong. In a world without copyright laws, everything does not automatically turn to BSD, it remains up to the author to release or not to release the software, and then plenty of software can be released based on a contract of some sort.
However there would be much more free software than there is today, nobody could prevent somebody from releasing it after all, and it wouldn't even be an issue in the first place.
It wasn't until Bill Gates that people started treating software as if it is truly unique in som
Re:I hope he wins. (Score:4, Insightful)
Abolished? That's what smart people would do. But in the real world where the number of dollars just about always wins out over doing what's right, what will happen is even more ridiculous patents being shoved through the system that are so general that it will prevent anyone from ever being able to come up with another "invention" without infringing on a dozen patents. This will effectively kill innovations and cement the position of the big boys at the top of the ladder.
Patents were designed to facilitate progress. Now they are abused to facilitate profits.
Re: (Score:3)
Profits are fine as long as they are made the honest way - satisfying customer demand, as opposed to buying political power with bribes.
Patents are like property (Score:2)
And so prescriptive rights [wikipedia.org] should apply if the patent holder doesn't defend his/her rights for an extended period of time.
Trojan Room Coffee Pot (Score:5, Interesting)
The Trojan Room Coffee Pot cam predates this by two years, though that was on a local network and didn't use a web browser. It didn't appear on the Internet until November, 1993.
The Netscape Fishcam shortly followed. I believe the first outdoor cam was at an antartic research station shortly after that.
Moving images were enabled by the "server-push" feature in Netscape's server and client. I'm assuming this used that technology, which of necessity would have pre-dated this claim. I would think the use case would be obvious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
The Trojan Room Coffee Pot cam predates this by two years, though that was on a local network and didn't use a web browser. It didn't appear on the Internet until November, 1993.
That doesn't apply. The Eolas patent is all about browser plugins, a technology invented by Mike Doyle very early on during the development of the web and which he demonstrated to MS sometime back shortly after he applied for a patent. After getting the brush-off, he was furious to discover ActiveX was basically the same thing and made basically after someone saw his demo. That lead to the whole legal dispute. (If you ask Mike[*] now, he says that fighting legal wars over patents is a horrible thing to do,
Patent Section 16 Fig 9 (Score:5, Interesting)
Title of the article needs to be changed... (Score:2)
...to "How many times can Slashdotters make the same Al Gore joke in a single article comments section? Click below to find out!"
Who wrote the summary? (Score:2)
1993? Mosiac was already released... (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_(web_browser) [wikipedia.org]
Official release 1993, pre-release versions were available in 1992.
My university was one of the first to have a "high speed" link then. IIRC, we had a dedicated DS1 which allowed those of us in the engineering school to view some of the very first pictures available on the web using pre-release Mosaic beta loads. Several of the grad students at the time were working with folks doing the primary research on surrounding technologies.
I *think* it was 1992 (my second year) when we started using it pretty heavily. A favorite passtime was downloading "questionable" pics from the various alt.xxx.pictures newsgroups and opening mosaic windows on other people's Sun workstations, so that the lab admin would kick them out... That lab admin, wasn't too sharp.
Good times, good times!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
This joke is sooooooo Old!
The only saving grace is that it never gets old :)
Re:LIAR (Score:5, Funny)
Re:LIAR (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:LIAR (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Can we ask him if the chicken or egg came first?
Or is this more like claiming the chicken omelette came before either?
Re:LIAR (Score:5, Informative)
Re:LIAR (Score:4, Funny)
What's next? Will Bill Gates be said to have invented the microchip?
Wasn't that Kim Jong-il?
Re: (Score:3)
You've been reading too much Onion
http://www.theonion.com/articles/microsoft-patents-ones-zeroes,599 [theonion.com]
Re:LIAR (Score:5, Funny)
This guy claims he "allowed users to interact with images inside of a web browser window" ?? So a web browser was invented before the web itself? Can we ask him if the chicken or egg came first?
He is a biologist. He would be the one to ask.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Al Gore would probably have a better claim than this guy (if he actually made such a claim, which he didn't).
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
That is a direct quote from Al Gore in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on March 9, 1999. Now, his wording was off, and he later corrected himself by saying that he meant he helped promote the internet, and he pushed bills that moved the internet forward--he did not mean to claim actual credit for it's invention. However, the joke is still funny, and he DID claim it (albeit through poor wording).
Re:LIAR (Score:5, Informative)
That is a direct quote from Al Gore
Taken out-of-context and by your own admission, not what he meant to say. That's why it tiring and not funny any more.
Re:LIAR (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that "create" is not the same as "invent."
From Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn [interesting-people.org] :
No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the
Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among
people in government and the university community. But as the two people
who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the
Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a
Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to
our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.
Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his
role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the
initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have
argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover,
there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's
initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving
Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and
promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it
is timely to offer our perspective..
I know both of these gentlemen, and getting them to agree on anything is not easy. Anyone, at this late date, who thinks its funny to denigrate Al Gore in this fashion is, IMHO, an idiot.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not true, but it's still funny. There never was a redneck who shot his buddy when the 911 operator said "let's make sure he's dead" either, but it's still funny.
Vint Cerf is obstructing the truth a little? (Score:5, Insightful)
Al Gore insisted that multi-site network access be publicly available, and made that happen using his power as a public servant to get money and government approval. He did that back when CEOs didn't know how to type. That service became the internet as we know it today. By that measure Al Gore did "create" the the public utility we call the internet.
My understanding, which may be wrong, is that Vint Cerf did nothing to make the internet a public utility. He didn't express an opinion. He didn't help promote the internet as a public utility until Al Gore made that possible and somewhat popular.
Before Al Gore's involvement, multi-site network access was available to those with U.S. government contracts, which restricted it to universities and corporations like Tektronix. Remember that in the U.S. the initial drive to network sites together was by DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [wikipedia.org], which is part of the U.S. government's ongoing drive to find more efficient ways of killing people and destroying property. There was, initially, no intent to do anything for anyone but the U.S. military. As the Wikipedia article says, "The Mansfield Amendment of 1973 expressly limited appropriations for defense research (through ARPA/DARPA) to projects with direct military application."
It's difficult now for technically knowledeable people to understand how technically backward most people were back then. Al Gore both knew about network technology and recognized its importance.
It seems reasonable to observe that the reason Vint Cerf's defense of Al Gore over the years has been expressed in tangled language is because he didn't want all the credit for the public utility to go to Al Gore.
Re:LIAR (Score:4, Funny)
Re:LIAR (Score:5, Funny)
I filed for a patent on this joke in 1999, and, as soon as it is approved, I plan to sue everyone who ever used it into bankruptcy.
Re:LIAR (Score:5, Insightful)
That's an old, tired, indulgent falsehood posing as a joke.
It irritates me not just because it's unfunny, but more because it takes a certain kind of mindset to think it's funny. You have to like beating down on others for their being dumb (whether that's actually what's going on), while simultaneously making yourself feel superior.
Basically, you have to be a bully at heart.
I find it irritating seeing bullies smugly picking on people. At least this "joke" serves a good purpose: to spotlight who's a bully.
Re: (Score:3)
The butthurt -- it burns, my precious, oh yes IT BURNS!
Re:LIAR (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
2 + 2 = 5, HAHAHAHAHAH!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Al Gore claimed to have invented the intarwebs
Jesus F. Christ, give this a rest. This wasn't funny the first time I heard this bullshit in about 1999, and it sure hasn't improved with age.
But the nerd rage that follows is always hilarious !
Re: (Score:3)
If you look at the patent, he's not claiming to have "invented the internet". The patent is basically for use of the embed tag (which is described quite elaborately in the patent).
The patent is technically for a "Distributed Hypermedia Method For Automatically Invoking External Application Providing Interaction And Display Of Embedded Objects Within A Hypermedia Document".