FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
FITUG e.V.Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft |
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http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/today/article/0,6729,334436,00.html
Lumbering BT mishits on links
Online editor Victor Keegan says the British telecommunications giant is doing itself no favours by belatedly pursuing a hyperlinks patent claim
Tuesday June 20, 2000
It is difficult to see how British Telecommunications will gain from the claim that it has been sitting on key US patents for hyperlinks, one of the key ingredients of the world wide web which allow users to browse from page to page all over the world. If it wins its case in the US then it will invite an avalanche of protest from net users everywhere who have long regarded the web as being a free public good. This is the view strongly endorsed by Tim Berners-Lee, the British computer scientist who up until now has been acclaimed as having largely invented the world wide web when he worked at the nuclear physics laboratory in Switzerland.
If BT wins then it may get extra income but at the cost of a huge public relations backlash which it could do without. It doesn't win either way, because not to have realised until quite recently that it had been sitting on the patents of the central nervous system of the web will only reinforce its image of being a giant monopoly too unwieldy to exploit its underlying potential. It has been criticised for years for not using its 90% monopoly of domestic internet access to launch cheap broadband internet access for all.
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