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Hyperlinking Still Public Domain

Judge rules for Prodigy, says British Telecom doesn't hold a patent on hyperlinking.

Ashlee Vance, IDG News Service

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A U.S. federal judge has thrown out a claim by British Telecommunications that Prodigy violated a patent on hyperlinking, the technology that connects data on the Web through 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 on Thursday. The company did not violate a patent that British Telecom claims for hyperlink technology, McMahon ruled.

The decision came on the heels of a previous order from McMahon that limited how British Telecom 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.

Patent Cited

British Telecom, based in London, claimed the rights to the hyperlinking concept. It cited its so-called Sargent patent, U.S. patent number 4,873,662, filed in the U.S. in 1976 and granted in 1989. It was filed by Desmond J. Sargent, and involved the way information is displayed on a computer terminal, and that information's relationship and interaction with material it connects to on another computer.

"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 is now a subsidiary of SBC Communications. The ISP has it was the target for BT's suit because it was the first commercial Internet provider in the U.S.

The judge's ruling means the widely practiced method of hyperlinking Web sites and information is not covered by British Telecom's patent. The company still retains the patent, despite the ruling.

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