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>BT OWNS KEY WEB PATENT > >It turns out that British Telecom has owned a U.S. patent covering >hyperlinks for the last 14 years, but up until now has made no attempt to >exploit the patent commercially. The patent, which expires in 2006, was >buried among 15,000 other global patents owned by the telecom giant until it >was rediscovered "a few years ago" during a routine review of the company's >intellectual property. BT has now decided to commercialize the technology, >which allows Web surfers to move between pages by clicking on pictures or >text -- a move that could earn BT hundreds of millions of pounds. "We are >not trying to stop anybody using the Internet. We simply want some >reasonable royalties based on the revenues that other organizations are >enjoying from making use of this intellectual property," BT said in a >statement Monday. "We are not trying to take anything away from Tim >Berners-Lee, but [BT] did invent a way of structuring information to make it >easily accessible." The company added that it has spent the last two years >researching its claim to the technology to make sure it holds up in court. >"It is not something you want to shoot from the hip on," it said. > >(Financial Times 20 Jun 2000) >"http://www.ft.com/" > >NewsScan Daily >"http://www.newsscan.com/" janet paterson 53 now / 41 dx / 37 onset 613 256 8340 / PO Box 171 Almonte Ontario K0A 1A0 Canada visit my website "a new voice" at: "http://www.geocities.com/janet313/"