Web Group Backs Microsoft in Patent Suit

Web Group Backs Microsoft in Patent Suit "In a long letter yesterday, Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium director, who created the basic software standards for the Web, said the patent office should begin a review of the patent "to prevent substantial economic and technical damage to the operation of the World Wide Web."
In his letter to James E. Rogan, director of the patent office, Mr. Berners-Lee repeatedly emphasized the wider public interest in a review of the patent. If the claims in the patent are upheld and enforced, Mr. Berners-Lee warned, "the cycle of innovation on the Web would be substantially retarded." Later, he wrote that the patent, if unchallenged, represented "a substantial setback for global interoperability and the success of the open Web."