Intellectual Property Law

EFF Takes Case To Defend Digg, CNET, NYT, eBaums, WaPo Against Patent TrollMashable!

Like to game on the Web? If so, great.

But there?s a good chance that you aren?t too thrilled about patent trolls. Nasty vermin. The come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they?re behemoth corporations. At others they?re lowly, money-grubbing individuals looking to score easy hits in court. (Or outside, in cases that defendants settle behind closed doors.)

Early last month, word hit the Net about a Mr Sheldon Goldberg [Slashdot], an individual who has looked to every bit the sleazeball, sending a lawsuit off to multiple companies, including Digg, eBaums World, The New York Times, CNET, and the Washington Post. The lawsuits Goldberg issued claimed infringements were made on a patent having to do with network gaming. Specifically, the patents ensure rights for a ?method and system for playing games on a network.? Logically, that would involve online gaming, yes?

Sure. And considering that such a claim is so very generic, one would think it has no real chance of holding up to scrutiny. Yet here we are. The patent, exemplifying the shoddiness of the US Patent Office, was granted. Back in 2001, two years after it was filed. And for over a month now, Mr Goldberg has been working to get some recompense for damages. What damages, precisely? We don?t know. And we couldn?t care enough to find out, considering the ridiculousness of the situation Goldberg has forced upon the abovementioned businesses.

Fortunately for Digg, CNET and the rest of the defendants in the case, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), has taken on the task of challenging Goldberg, according to a report delivered by Ars Technica Sunday afternoon. The case is been taken as part of the EFF?s Patent Busting Project, an effort to challenge the legitimacy of junk patents.

The argument to be exercised by the EFF is one of prior art. The Foundation documents Netrek, ?an online multiplayer game with origins in the mid-1980s? as having made use of ?the same technology described in Goldberg?s patent.? Ars Technica?s Eric Bangeman went on to reveal that Netrek has long been an open source system, and was distributed freely via Usenet as far back as 1989.

One can?t help but offer up words of support to the EFF for driving for justice in this instances, as it has it many others. Goldberg could do with a little legal admonishment. And neither should the US Patent Office be free of any criticisms here.

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Full post as published by IP Law Daily on February 03, 2008 (boomark / email).