Michael Doyle is a biologist. He claims to have invented and patented, in 1993, a system while at the University of California that let doctors view embryos over the Internet.
Why is this a big deal? Because Michael Doyle claims to be the guy who invented looking at pictures in a web browser, which means, according to his lawyers, online video, image distortion in a web browser (think a product you can rotate), and search auto-complete all infringe on his patents, so give him all your money plz.
Normally, we’d offer Doyle some respect, but he’s represented by Eolas Technologies, the single most successful patent troll in tech history, who managed to get a $500 million judgement against Microsoft. That was overturned, but they managed to force Microsoft to settle instead of killing them in court.
Why should you care? This trolling could suck millions upon millions of dollars out of everybody from giants like Amazon all the way down to your aunt, who is supposedly violating Doyle’s patent by sharing pictures of her beloved Yorkie on Facebook. In the worst case scenario, it would essentially defund huge portions of the web: it’d shut down YouTube, make posting pictures to Facebook nearly impossible, and return Google to the bad old days before search auto-complete.
It would be one thing if this were just a case of one guy being accidentally overlooked and politely asking these companies to do the right thing: we seriously doubt Google and Amazon would be disinclined to not at least respect the guy in that case. No, this is greed, pure and simple, especially since Doyle’s claim is controversial to say the least. And it may set back the Internet by a solid decade if Doyle wins.
This is why we mock patent trolls and copyright trolls. Fundamentally, these are short-sighted people who don’t care about the damage they do to others, or how they restrict innovation; they just see deep pockets at Google, or Amazon, or Apple and by God, they’re entitled to a share of someone else’s money. We don’t think Michael Doyle is being deliberately evil…but he’s definitely being a troll.
(Image via Shutterstock)