Richard Giles

Dr. Mike Doyle, Founder of Eolas, a company that is taking Microsoft to court for patent infringement covering all uses of plugins, applets, activeX controls and other similar technology, says this about the possibilities :

“Is there any practical settlement amount that is worth more to Eolas than a victory at trial? Considering the facts in the case and the magnitude of the stakes here, a highly likely outcome is that it will actually go to trial, and, once it does, that a jury will award us both damages and an injunction. Injunction is the key word here. That is what patent rights provide: the power to exclude. What if we were to just say no? Or, what if some other big player were to acquire or merge with us? What if only one best-of-breed browser could run embedded plug-ins, applets, ActiveX controls, or anything like them, and it wasn’t IE? How competitive would the other browsers be without those capabilities? How would that change the current dynamics in the Industry?”

For more on this see Cringley or the news on their own web site.

I wonder if Sun are in talks with them.