jmke

"Dear website owner, congratulations on your excellent site, which includes features covered by our registered patent, #5,251,294. As the description indicates, many of the components on your pages, particularly your menus, rollover images, and shortcuts, are detailed in our claim. We would be delighted to lease these to you at a reasonable royalty rate of $80,000. Please call our offices at your convenience to arrange a payment schedule."

Nuts, right? We wish. Meet the Webvention Company, which appears to exist largely for the purpose of collecting money from companies whose online sites include commonly used features that can be construed as part of patent 5,251,294.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...camp aign=rss

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