This month SBC Communications Inc. launched an effort to actively protect its patents on a “structured document browser,” U.S. patent No. 5,933,841 and No. 6,442,574.
SBC sent a patent infringement notice to information education products website Museum Tour indicating that “any website which has static, linked information (top banners, menus, bottom banners) which are displayed while other sections of the page are displayed as non-static (the area where products appear on most websites) infringes upon the patents they hold.
Museum Tour has posted a web page with links to SBC’s 34 page infringment notice here. As a related resource, see Dan Gillmor’s blog associated with his column on SBC’s patent claims. He is seeking instances of prior art, and is updating this blog with pertinent information on what will no doubt remain a newsworthy story for some time.