Stardate 20010716.1633 (On Screen): Among bogus internet patents, this one has to take the cake. I can't believe that this is still hanging on, and it sounds like the defendants are using the wrong basis to fight it. It appears they tried to win in the Markman hearing by getting a narrow interpretation of the terms of the patent so that it did not apply to them, followed by a motion for dismissal. That may not now stand with this appeals court decision, but it seems to me that this patent can be
challenged both on the basis of prior art and on the basis of obviousness. People were distributing executable programs through Usenet in the 1970's before the Internet as such existed (and long before this patent was filed) and in any case a program is just data, and the Internet was always about the ability to move data of various kinds from one place to another easily. (That was true even in the days of the Arpanet, when the first killer app was FTP.)
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