BT sues Prodigy over hyperlink patent

December 16, 2000 8:43 AM

BT sues Prodigy over hyperlink patent another glorious example of "we have nothing better to offer than a really big lawsuit"
posted by bliss322 (5 comments total)

It's all absurd and I doubt it would go through. Obvisously, BT doesn't own a history book, because there is evidence of demonstrations of hyperlinks with the first mouse that date back to the 60's. I'm not worrying.
posted by tomorama at 12:52 PM on December 16, 2000

At first I thought you meant techno man BT was sueing the group Prodigy.....
posted by grank at 1:44 PM on December 16, 2000

This is insanely hilarious, almost. I mean, this is ten thousand times more ostentatiously absurd than Amazon's 1-click patent.

I hope the fallout from this will be the wakeup call needed to reform the patent system, especially the software patent system.

What would happen if everyone ignored absurd patents? I mean, they can't sue *everyone*...
posted by beth at 8:19 PM on December 16, 2000

ohhh.. I have a patent on text boxes. Everyone pay me! Man I'm getting tired of stories like this. Will they ever learn?
posted by bytecode at 6:55 PM on December 17, 2000

ditto that grank. i thought "hyperlink" was some trance track or something.
posted by brittney at 7:03 PM on December 17, 2000