News

Patent Awarded for the Use of Rich Media Applications over the Internet

February 27, 2006

The U.S Patent and Trademark Office has awarded patent to a small San Francisco based content development firm for the use of many rich-media applications over the Internet. This may give rise to a situation where rich-media apps users have to pay a royalty in terms of license fee to the patent holder.

The broad patent granted to Balthaser Online covers all the rich-media technology implementations, when any device accesses the application over the Internet. It even includes the implementations that use the widely applied tools like Flash, Flex, Java, Ajax, and XAML. The implementations may range from software decorating to audio streaming.

Many big technical enterprises are likely to challenge the patent soon. Technical experts say that many processes in the 83 claims lack novelty and are nonobvious, two important conditions required in getting a patent. Insiders claim that Balthaser Online would be laughing all the way to the bank, if and when the patent gets enforced.

Balthaser may fight it out to the very end to get the approval for the enforcement of the patent. But there are also chances that it might sell the patent to another bigger company, who has the resources to defend the patent and who also stands to make huge returns from winning it. Either way, Balthaser seems to benefit from the patent.

The developer community looks upon the patent claims with skepticism. Lots of posters published online has made a mockery of Balthaser's patent claims.