SBC Enforcing All-Encompassing Web Patent
The Register,
Jan 23, 2003
A company called SBC Communications Inc is reported to be enforcing patent it owns on the use of frames in web pages. In a letter distributed to web site owners, the company notes the site's use of "selectors or tabs that correspond to specific locations (which) are not lost when a different part of the document is displayed to the user." It then demands between $527 and $16.6m per year to license the patented technology. This use of frames was first made possible in Netscape's Navigator 2.0, released in October of 1995 and was widely and almost immediately used to provide navigation for hundreds of websites (including my own). It is currently used by such systems as WebCT and Blackboard. The patent was filed in May, 1996 and granted in August, 1999. No word on why the company then waited four years to enforce royalties on its, um, invention.
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