'Audacious' BT under fire for hyperlink patent claims

NEWS Legal experts have reacted with surprise at BT's move to exploit its patent of the technology behind hyperlinks. BT claims it developed the technology behind hyperlinks back in the early 70s when employees of the Post Office - which then owned the UK's telecoms infrastructure - worked on Prestel, an early videotext service. A BT spokeswoman told silicon.com: "The hypertext links which that technology was based is now what's behind the world wide web." David Bahler, partner at US firm Fulbright & Jaworski, said: "BT is looking at what Lucent and Texas Instruments have done, which is to mine their patent portfolio for nuggets and turn it into a revenue source." He said the technology itself looks perfectly patentable, but added: "It's not a done deal in my mind because of the claiming strategy they selected. They have used means and function claims language, which was considered very broad at the time, but has since been interpreted very narrowly." Simon Stokes, partner with UK law firm, Tarlo Lyons, also questioned whether the patent will stand up in court. He said: "I'm surprised they have the patent and surprised that they have the audacity to claim on it. One of the people they try to extract money from may have deep enough pockets to fight it." BT maintains that it owns the patent for hyperlinks and intends to charge US ISPs for their use of the technology. The telco hopes to recoup "adequate compensation" by licensing the technology to ISPs in the first instance, and possibly to corporates at a later date. BT filed an application with the US patent office in 1979, and patent number 4,873,662 was granted in 1986. UK-based firm QED Intellectual Property and New York law firm Kenyon & Kenyon have been retained to fight BT's corner. The spokeswoman added: "We believe we have an obligation to protect our patents and an obligation to our shareholders. We are seeking payments for licensing of this technology."