BT seeks cash from US 'hyperlink' users
BT said today it wants US internet service providers to pay for their customers' rights to use hyperlinks in websites, because the British telco claims it invented them.
BT said today it wants US internet service providers to pay for their customers' rights to use hyperlinks in websites, because the British telco claims it invented them.
BT said today it wants US internet service providers to pay for their customers’ rights to use websites’ hyperlinks – the element of a web page that allows a user to move to another Web page or site – because the British telcoms company claims it invented them.
In an unusual move, BT has hired intellectual property licensing firm QED, part of UK technology licensing company Scipher, to recover the unpaid licence fees from the hundreds of websites that use hyperlinks.
BT said the patent dates back to its early networking days, with its Viewdata online services, including Prestel. It said it applied for the patent with the US Patent Office in 1976, but didn’t receive it until 1989.
Now BT wants money from organisations using hyperlinks until the patent expires in 2006. Its patents on hyperlinks in other countries have already expired.
A BT spokesman said getting fees from everyone in the US using hyperlinks would be impossible. ‘It’s not practical to licence every internet user – it would be nonsensical, so we’re approaching ISPs to talk about licensing,’ said the spokesman. He confirmed that BT was seeking money from the ISPs.
‘We only want what is fair,’ the spokesman said, citing the high patent licence fees enjoyed by other major technology companies. IBM receives over $1bn a year from licencees of its intellectual property.
Hyperlinks are used extensively across the internet and BT’s mission is going to prove difficult to implement.
Tim Pearson, a council member of the ISP Association in the UK, said patent laws are outdated. ‘It doesn’t suprise me that this is crawling out of the woodwork because we’ve seen a general increase in the aggressive use of patents,’ he said.
Pearson said BT should pursue website owners, rather than ISPs who he said are only responsible for hosting content, rather than creating it. ‘I don’t think BT will win istelf many friends though,’ he added.