[akumpf]

Tim Berners-Lee's view of patents doesn't really seem to matter here (and it's surprising to me that the court/lawyers would entertain that as being important). What does matter is prior art, first-to-invent, novelty, uniqueness, and non-obviousness; all of which the Eolas patents seem to be lacking.

Long live the open web; it belongs to all of us.

[wvenable]

It's a question of whether the jury should trust his testimony. The lawyer wanted to show that Tim Berners-Lee was biased against patents, in general, and therefore his testimony on this matter is suspect.

[hexagonc]

But what difference would his personal beliefs on software patents make toward his credibility in this matter? Whether the patents are valid or not is a matter of fact, as it would have to be in order for the patent and trade office to issue the patents in the first place. What are you supposed to conclude by knowing that TBL is against software patents? That he's lying about what happened at CERN and Pei Wei's browser? This looked like a smear campaign and I'm surprised the defendant's lawyers didn't object to it (maybe they did but I didn't read it in the article).

On an unrelated note, scientists often don't do well in debate type situations like a courtroom because scientists are often more concerned about truth then winning an argument. Thus, they'll often concede a small point from the opposing argument that is trumped up as a major victory by the opposition. The point may have little impact toward the truth of the matter but is perceived as important by an ignorant audience because the opposition is touting it as such.

[aptwebapps]

Biased against American patents, no less. He's probably a dirty Socialist to boot.

I wonder whether the writer was dramatizing things a bit. I would have expected TBL to have been better prepared by the defendants' lawyers.

[EGreg]

What if the eolas patent didn't lack this? What if it really was the first one to submit a $400 patent application in which it describes how things will work in a "browser", some technology that will support those things only a few years from now? Under current patent law, merely submitting a patent application lets you prevent anyone from actually implementing this for 20 years.

In 2005, if I knew that touchscreens would get small enough to work on iPhones, could I spend $4k for 10 patents just to cover all kinds of things you can do with touchscreens on mobile phones? I would have a component there labeled "touchscreen", even though such a thing didn't exist yet. Then, when they finally got small enough and phones got produced, I could use this patent to charge apple and other companies any amount I wanted for the license, through the doctrine of equivalents

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_equivalents