http://www.joaobordalo.com/articles_controller.rb/tag?tag=copyright en-us 40 Simplicity, Usability, Productivity, Code, Design, Business and more <p>Everyone is talking about the patent granted by the US Patent Office to <a href="http://balthaser.com/">Balthaser</a>, covering "methods, systems and processes for the design and creation of rich-media applications via the Internet." A lot of FUD is going on, with people saying that AJAX, Java and even Flash will need to be licensed in the near future.</p> <p>So, I decided to read the <a href="http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,000,180.WKU.&OS=PN/7,000,180&RS=PN/7,000,180">patent</a>, and it's not that bad: the usage of rich-media applications is not covered under this patent. Instead, what Balthaser is patenting is a hosted application which enables normal people to build rich-media websites (or applications), there is, a rich-media website, that previously demanded designers, flash programmers and coders, can now be accomplished by anyone.</p> <p>So, Balthaser is defending is own tool, <a href="http://balthaser.com/">pro:FX</a>. The thing is, isn't this patent to broad? What is the definition of "rich-media application"?<p> <p>In the same day, Google launched is new service, <a href="http://pages.google.com/">Page Creator</a>, a website that enables you to create your own website, with the easiness and simplicity we know from Google. And after a <a href="http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/02/make_your_own_sites_with_googl.html">peek</a> to the Page Creator interface, my first question was: "Is this under the Balthaser patent?". <p>If is considered that Google (and others) must license this kind of technology to Balthaser, than we have just created a strong break on innovation, and I strongly believe that is not the objective of patents. They exist to encourage innovation, by protecting intellectual property, not for some guy to decide that put a <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/">Dreamweaver</a> on the web is innovation. That was too damn obvious to be considered as an inventive idea.</p> <p>I just hope <a href="http://patft.uspto.gov/">someone</a> get is senses, meanwhile, I'm happy to live in Europe.</p> Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:47:00 -0600 urn:uuid:741e850d-f287-41b6-84b7-4b139a25ffe1 bordalix http://www.joaobordalo.com/articles/2006/02/23/the-web-rich-media-patent copyright google