'Patent troll' Eolas defeated in final court appeal over invalidated patents

US appeals court upholds invalidation of Eolas' controversial web patents

Eolas, the "patent troll" that sought to cash-in on patents it claimed to own over web browser technology, has been defeated in its final appeal in court.

It follows a decade and a half of litigation, culminating in the invalidation of the company's key patents by an eight-person jury in the Eastern District Court of Texas in February 2012. That case involved Google, Amazon, JC Penney and Yahoo.

The US appeals court's decision yesterday upheld that decision, finally bringing an end to the company's quest for damages and/or licensing agreements.

Eolas was founded in 1994 by Michael Doyle, a former University of California researcher whose team claimed to have created the first web browser that supported plug-ins, demonstrated at Xerox PARC in November 1993 at the second Bay Area SIGWEB meeting.

His creation enabled doctors to view embryos online over the worldwide web and the University of California, which also stood to benefit financially from Eolas' legal action, helped Doyle to file the company's first patent.

The company filed two key patents in the US, number 5,838,906 in 1994 and number 7,599,985 in 2009. Eolas gained notoriety by filing first, in 1999, against Microsoft and winning a $521m verdict in 2003. Although thrown out on appeal, Microsoft settled in advance of a retrial.

Doyle had argued that the "interactive features" demonstrated in his 1993 web browser meant that any website that used similar features infringed his patents.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of hypertext markup language, was one of a number of "big names" that gave evidence against Eolas in court.

Despite the defeat, Doyle is nevertheless a multi-millionaire on the back of out of court settlements struck with companies, such as Microsoft, that did not have the stomach for a lengthy court fight.