A U.S. federal judge Thursday threw out the claim by British Telecommunications that Prodigy Communications violated a patent on hyperlinking, the technology that connects data on the Web via highlighted object links.
Judge Colleen McMahon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued a summary judgment in Prodigy's favor saying the company did not violate a patent that BT claims for hyperlink technology. The decision came on the heels of a previous order from McMahon that limited how BT could present and defend its claims on the patent. A summary judgment is a ruling in which the judge decides there are no factual issues that remain to be tried in a case and so parts of the case, or the entire complaint, can be decided without a trial. It can be appealed.
BT, in London, claimed that its so-called Sargent patent, U.S. patent number 4,873,662, filed in the U.S. in 1976 and granted in 1989, provided the company with the rights to hyperlinking.
"I find that as a matter of law, no jury could find that Prodigy infringes the Sargent patent, nor that Prodigy contributes to infringement of the Sargent patent, nor actively induces others to infringe that patent," McMahon wrote in Thursday's opinion. "I therefore grant Prodigy's motion for summary judgment."
Prodigy, now a subsidiary of SBC Communications Inc., in Austin, Texas, has said it was the first commercial ISP in the U.S. and that this status made it the target for BT's suit.
"At this point, we trust that this will put to rest the claims that have been made," an SBC spokesman said. "We are hoping that this puts the issue to rest."
BT did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
BT first filed suit in a federal court in White Plains, New York, in regard to the alleged patent infringement. The company said the patent stemmed from research by an employee of the U.K. General Post Office (GPO) in the 1970s into text-based information systems. The GPO was divided into BT and the Post Office in 1981.
The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.
RELATED LINKS
Apply for your free subscription to Network World. Click here. Or get Network World delivered in PDF each week.
Request a reprint or permission to use this article.
