Does your web site have photos that hotlink to other pages? Pay up!

[thewayne]

A Singapore patent trollfirm has announced that they hold a patent on having a link on a clicked photo that pulls up another page.

This is not a joke, they've already sent out bills. There's no mention yet of this being challenged in court.

http://www.zdnetasia.com/techguide/smb/0,3800010798,62041802,00.htm

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/27/1643258

I think I need to upload my photo galleries, all of them have thumbnail pages that link to larger images.

*sigh*

Comments

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Weird. But the article also is confusing. First it says it's about any hotlinking,and then it says it's about image search engines.

[silveradept]

It's the process they have patented. Both hotlinks and image search engines put up an image with a link to some content, be it a full-size image or another webpage. So, if this holds up in courts, both of those types of usages could require the payment of royalty fees.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

So I might have to shut down the gallery on burn-gorman.com?

[silveradept]

Potentially. Although unlikely. I don't see a sudden summary judgment where everyone has to pay up for that kind of usage. There will be something negotiated, I'm sure.

[annaonthemoon.livejournal.com]

Well,and we run gallery software, so it's possible they'd go after the software co and not sites that are running it, anyway.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

There's no way it'll stand. It is an obvious combination of tags, you might as well try patenting the combination of bold and italic tags.

It will be overturned but it'll have to be challenged first. It'll be ignored until then.