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Internet technology provider Eolas Technologies has filed a lawsuit against a number of corporations for infringing a patent it also sued Microsoft over.
Eolas, which concluded its long legal battle with Microsoft in 2007, filed the suit in Texas against companies including: Apple, Google, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Adobe, Sun Microsystems, YouTube, Go Daddy and Blockbuster.
Non-tech businesses named in the case included Citigroup, Frito-Lay, JC Penney, JP Morgan and Playboy.
Eolas is claiming the companies used two patents, ’906 and ’985, without licenses in websites and other products.
’906, granted in November 1998, enables web browsers to act as platforms for fully interactive embedded applications. ’985, granted in October 2009, is a continuation of the first patent and relates to the use of plug-ins and AJAX web development techniques.
"We developed these technologies over 15 years ago and demonstrated them widely, years before the marketplace had heard of interactive applications embedded in web pages tapping into powerful remote resources,” Eolas chairman Michael Doyle said. “Profiting from someone else’s innovation without payment is fundamentally unfair. All we want is what’s fair."
The first court case to do with the ‘906 patent resulted in Microsoft handing over more than $565 million to Eolas in 2004. The case was re-examined several times, and resulted in an undisclosed settlement in 2007.
