Tech world's David takes on Goliath of Microsoft

A four-year legal battle with Microsoft over patent rights on a browser technology has ended in victory and a €468 million award to inventor Mike Doyle, head of tech company Eolas, writes Jamie Smyth, Technology Reporter

A Chicago-based inventor who named his firm Eolas (the Irish for "knowledge") has won what is believed to be the second-biggest patent award in US history, worth $521 million (€468 million).

Mr Mike Doyle, a third-generation Irish-American whose family came from New Ross, Co Wexford, won the damages award last week after a four-year legal battle with Microsoft.

In a story reminiscent of the biblical tale of David and Goliath, Mr Doyle - an adjunct professor at George Mason University in Virginia - persuaded a jury that Microsoft had infringed a patent on a type of browser technology.

The browser technology enables people to access interactive programs that are embedded in Web pages. These "plug-ins" or "applets" power a range of applications such as banner adverts.

Mr Doyle developed the technology with two colleagues while working at the University of California in 1994. A year later he bought the rights to commercialise the technology and filed for a patent on the university's behalf, which was granted in late 1998.

In the intervening four years, Mr Doyle alleged that Microsoft had embedded his patented technology into its hugely popular Internet Explorer web browser.

"When I heard the verdict from the judge, my heart was beating like a jack-hammer," said Mr Doyle, in a phone interview with The Irish Times. "The whole process, if you count the time taken to receive the patent, has taken eight years. There have been highs and lows on the way."

This is something of an understatement. At one point in the mid-1990s money was so tight for Mr Doyle that he chose to give away Eolas shares to friends and family for Christmas presents.

In another instance when Eolas was close to bankruptcy, Mr Doyle managed to keep the firm afloat by licensing his company logo to IBM, which uses the design as its own e-business logo.

How times have changed.

The University of California, where Mr Doyle and his two colleagues Mr David Martin and Mr Ang Cheong worked on the invention, owns the patent and will share some of the jury award.

But the lion's share of the $521 million award for damages will be scooped by Eolas Technologies, if the firm wins an expected appeal against the ruling from the software giant Microsoft.

Last week Microsoft described the result of the Eolas case as disappointing, and said it would appeal the court ruling.

"We believe the evidence will ultimately show that there was no infringement of any kind, and that the accused feature in our browser technology was developed by our own engineers based on pre-existing Microsoft technology," said the company.

Mr Doyle is not surprised by Microsoft's decision and expects the case to go to the US circuit court of appeals in the next 12-18 months. "Eighteen months from now I expect Microsoft to be writing a cheque and this will be more than the $520 million because of the interest charges."

Mr Doyle has not ruled out talking to Microsoft about an out-of-court settlement, although he does not expect this to happen.

Eolas, which as well as being the Irish word for knowledge is an acronym for "embedded objects linked across systems", is now a one-man operation. It is principally a research vehicle that Mr Doyle uses to file patents and undertake  projects.

Eolas is the lead software developer on the Visible Embryo project, which is based on the 155-year-old Carnegie Embryological Collection - a set of 7,000 human embryos on display.

The project, which is being co-ordinated by the George Mason University in Virginia, will make images of the embryos available online to researchers.

Details of this groundbreaking project are available at the website: www.natmedmuse.afip.org.

But the commercialisation of patents is Eolas's main focus.

"It \ has about nine patents, some of which are pending," says Mr Doyle, who has been told he will receive a new, potentially lucrative patent for the apparatus used to identify features of images on video display.

"This patent will enable users to click on moving characters on a movie screen to pull down information... I suspect that it is already in use somewhere but I haven't had the time to look around to check," he adds.

Eolas could seek licence fees from any firm found to be using this type of technology when it is granted a patent, but not for the time before a patent was awarded.

In the recent Microsoft case, Eolas was only able to claim damages for the period after the browser patent was filed in 1998. This was four years after Eolas alleges that Microsoft first began to embed its technology into its web browser, Internet Explorer.

The jury's award was based on royalties of $1.47 for each of 354 million copies of Windows sold during the damages period, from when the patent was issued in November 1998 through to September 2001.

Eolas had asked for $3.50 per copy, or a total of $1.2 billion, but this was turned down.

Mr Doyle stands to be the biggest winner from the ruling if Microsoft fails to overturn it. He owns about 40 per cent of Eolas stock, with the remainder held by about 100 people living in the Chicago area and friends and family.

"They are all smiling now," acknowledges Mr Doyle, who has yet to decide how to use the money if it is finally paid up.

"I'd like to expand our research and development operations and create new technologies. I'd like to make Eolas an R&D engine developing breakthrough technologies," he says.

"I've always wanted to set up a research centre in Wexford and that is something I'd certainly look at. Ireland has a good reputation for information technology and software engineering."

The dream of returning to the Republic as head of a multinational research firm may be some way off. But it would take a brave or foolish man to write off Mr Doyle - someone who has stood toe-to-toe against the Microsoft giant and lived to tell the tale.

Mr Michael Doyle in a suite at the Four Seasons hotel in Chicago where one of the bedrooms is converted into a file storage room complete with shelving for housing all the documents associated with the lawsuit. Photograph: Warren Skalski, Chicago Tribune Photo. Below: The Eolas "e" logo which was licensed to IBM.