xml-dev - RE: British Telecom owns Hyperlink?

["Dan Mabbutt" <Seigfried@msn.com>]

I read the original posting.  My real point was that there are lots of
possibilities.  Here are some more.

- BT Management knows they don't have a chance and they don't care.  They're
automatons responding to a stimulus (the suggestion, generated somewhere in
the bowels of the bureaucracy, that they just might be able to collect money
from this). Some suggestions, no matter how silly, must be given a response,
to avoid the possibility of being held liable for NOT giving a response.
- They don't know they don't have a chance because most of them know so
little about computers that they still require someone else to logon for
them.
- They have no idea this is going on in the first place because the whole
thing is being carried out from one bureaucracy to another far beneath the
management level.  They're too busy attending each other's Important Events.
- They know they have just about zero chance, but they have calculated that
a very tiny probability multiplied by a very huge number (licensing fees for
hyperlinking) is worth it anyway.

After all ... Univac (I know they're not Univac anymore) collects fees for
the GIF compression algorithm after years of "public domain" use.

All right ... I admit it ... they're all pretty pathetic ... but my second
point is that we're all pretty pathetic for putting up with it.  (Where's
the guillotine and the bullet pocked wall when we need it?)

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xml-dev@xml.org [mailto:owner-xml-dev@xml.org]On Behalf Of Bob
Kline
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2000 2:56 PM
To: Dan Mabbutt
Cc: XML Developers List
Subject: RE: British Telecom owns Hyperlink?

On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Dan Mabbutt wrote:

> OK ... Thinking Dilbert, I can imagine one reason why BT did this
> that doesn't put them in a pathetic light.  (If my idea has any
> truth to it, all of us are in a pathetic light for allowing it to
> happen.)
>
> My experience is that lawyers will sue for any cause that might
> yield fees for themselves. If a lawyer can convince a court to
> entertain a suit against management for not protecting an "asset" of
> the company (the hyperlink patent rights), fees can be generated.
> What if BT management is simply protecting themselves from frivolous
> lawsuits by filing frivolous patent applications?

I think you must have missed the original posting.  According to the
news report, BT isn't just filing patent applications, they're trying to
(or pretending to try to -- according to the Dilbert theory) collect
royalties.  If they're not pretending, then I don't understand how their
actions could be construed as anything but pathetic.  You don't for a
moment suppose that they have any chance after all these years of
convincing a court to force everyone who uses hyperlinks to pay BT for
the privilege, do you?

--
Bob Kline



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