Vuestar Technologies Pte Ltd is a
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
-incorporated subsidiary owned by Australian parent Goldspirit Investments Pty Ltd. The owner of both companies, Ronald Neville Langford, applied for a number of
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
s around the world relating to search techniques using
hyperlinked images to other
websites
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wiki ...
or web pages.
[All your Interwibble is belong to us](_blank)
Silvie Barak, The Inquirer
''The Inquirer'' (stylized as TheINQUIRER) was a British technology tabloid website founded by Mike Magee after his departure from ''The Register'' (of which he was one of the founding members) in 2001. In 2006 the site was acquired by Dutch ...
, 28 May 2008
In May 2008, Vuestar sent invoices to owners of several Singaporean websites demanding licensing fees if the websites wished to continue using “visual images” to link to other web pages.
[Singapore Firm Claims Patent Breach By Virtually All Websites](_blank)
Slashdot
''Slashdot'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''/.'') is a social news website that originally advertised itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters". It features news stories concerning science, technology, and politics that are submitted and eval ...
, 27 May 2008[S'pore firm claims patent to image search](_blank)
Eileen Yu, ZDNet
ZDNET is a business technology news website owned and operated by Red Ventures.
The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication.
His ...
Asia, 27 May 2008 A Singapore law firm advised people to carefully analyse the wide claims being made by Vuestar as to the intellectual property covered by their patent.
[Keystone Law Alert](_blank)
, Visual Images Search Patent
Company claims
Vuestar's website states that it has obtained granted patents for "a method of locating web-sites using visual images" in Singapore,
Australia,
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
.
It says that website owners who "use visual
images which hyperlink to other web-pages or web-sites in accordance with the patent ... whether on the first page or subsequent pages of a web-site" require a license from them to continue doing so legally.
User licenses are issued for one year and restricted to Singapore.
Annual licensing fees depend on
web traffic
Web traffic is the data sent and received by visitors to a website. Since the mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of Internet traffic. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are ...
as well as the extent of image hyperlinking
and range from nothing for governments, charities and non commercial enterprises to "millions".
In May 2008, in a move which has sparked criticism among
online communities
An online community, also called an internet community or web community, is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may fe ...
, Vuestar sent invoices to owners of several Singaporean websites demanding licensing fees if the websites wished to continue using visual images to link to other web pages.
Vuestar has stated that it also intends to enforce its rights in
Australia and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
.
Response
Owners of
Arowana
Arowanas are freshwater bony fish of the subfamily Osteoglossinae, also known as bony tongues (the latter name is now often reserved for Arapaiminae). In this family of fish, the head is bony and the elongated body is covered by large, heavy sc ...
community site Arofanatics.com were sent an invoice for S$5,350, but they have said that they do not intend to pay.
The actions of Vuestar have been called
patent trolling by some.
[Patent troll sending out invoices for image hyperlinks](_blank)
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica, 28 May 2008[Today in Patent Trolling: VueStar](_blank)
John Biggs, ''The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'' (TechCrunch
TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare.
In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately $ ...
), 29 May 2008 Ronald Langford, the inventor and a major shareholder of Vuestar Technologies, has stated that "there has been no law broken" and that his company is seeking payment for the use of its technology "because the company has been 'damaged financially to the tune of millions of dollars'"
[''Man who sparked patent uproar says...'', Liew Hanqing, The New Paper, 29 May 2008, quoted b]
refutevuestarpatent.biz
Eileen Yu, on the
ZDNet
ZDNET is a business technology news website owned and operated by Red Ventures.
The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication.
His ...
Asia blog, suggested that Vuestar's patent was the result of a flawed patent-approval system.
[Is the law still not catching up?](_blank)
Eileen Yo, ZDNet Asia BTW Blog However, she did also point out that Vuestar's claims might not be true or that they might have misinterpreted their patent.
Singapore law firm, Keystone Law, also advised people to carefully analyse Vuestar's wide claims on the intellectual property covered by their patent.
Patents
The patents owned by the parent company GoldSpirit Investment Pty Ltd and Vuestar Technology Pte Ltd were all registered under the name of inventor Ronald Langford, including , an
Singaporean patent 95940
The Australian patent has ceased through failure to pay a renewal fee due in October 2007, according t
the IPAustralian patent database was also filed but lapsed through failure to pay a renewal fee before the
European Patent Office
The European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg), the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the organisation had conducted their own
prior art search
Prior art (also known as state of the art or background art) is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria fo ...
.
All of these patents originated from which was searched and examined by
IP Australia
IP Australia is an agency of the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. IP Australia administers intellectual property rights and legislation relating to patents, trade marks, registered designs and plant breeder's rights in Australia. ...
who were unable to identify any particularly relevant prior art. The patents in Australia and Singapore were therefore granted without significant limitations to the
claims. The US patent was granted only after further examination by the
US Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Ale ...
resulting in additional limitations being added to all of the independent claims as granted, including that: "the visual content comprises a plurality of mini-images in the form of a conveyor belt slide show". Further US prosecution details are available via the
USPTO Public PAIR system
Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) is an online service provided by the United States Patent and Trademark Office to allow users to see the prosecution histories of United States patents and patent applications and obtain copies of doc ...
.
See also
*
Odex's actions against file-sharing
Odex's actions against file sharing were Japan copyright owners' pre-action discovery to Singapore Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to request for subscribers details in Singapore who were traced to illegal download activities of their licen ...
References
External links
Vuestar TechnologiesRichard PalaceRefuteVueStarPatent.biz
{{Authority control
Internet in Singapore
Singaporean intellectual property law
Software patent law