What do the following companies have in common with each other?
Aeo, Amway, American Eagle Outfitters, AOL, Barnes & Noble, Bass Pro Shops, Bestbuy, Borders Group, Brawn, Cabela's, Coldwater Creek, Continental Airlines, Delta Airlines, Footlocker, General Motors, Google, Hayneedle, Iconix Brand Group, IP Holdings, Juicy Couture, Kohl's Illinois, LF LLC, Limited Brands, Liz Claiborne, Lowes Home Centers, Mapquest, Musician's Friend, Nordstrom, Onestop Internet, Oriental Trading Company, Patagonia, QVC, Rampage Clothing Company, Recreational Equipment, Redbox Automated Retail, Restoration Hardware, Sony, Southwest Airlines, Staples, Sunglass Hut International, Target Corporation, The Nieman Marcus Group, The North Face, The Orvis Company, Tiffany & Co, TripAdvisor, US Airways, VF Outdoor, Williams-Sonoma, Women's Apparel Group, and Zappos Retail.
The answer is they're all being sued for a patent infringement by a company called Parallel Networks LLC in the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division. Conveniently, Parallel Networks LLC lives at 100 E.Ferguson Street, Suite #602 in Tyler, Texas.
The defendants are being sued over US patent 6,446,111, called Method and apparatus for client-server communications using a limited capability client over a speed communications network, issued on the 3rd of September 2002.
So what are they alleged to have done? Each of them uses "servers which receive requests from client devices and collect data items as a function of the requests; executable applets dynamically generated by such servers in response to the client requests; constituent systems associated with such applets comprising a subset of the data items and further comprising a data interface capability configured to provide a plurality of operations with such applets being transferred over the communications link to the client device."
Couldn't Parallel Networks LLC just sue the whole world, rather than just all of the above?
Actually there just ain't no "Buster".
Ev'ry man for himself in the field, *A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, *B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, *C. A times B times C equals $X. There's no long division in Fight Club.
Ev'ry fool know back in the day when Albert, Gore, Bill invented the Internets as a series of tubes, they came with certain inalienable rights.
Paralle(ga)l Networks LLC, did not invent Client Server, although we're tempted to stuff them down the deep throats of Dumb Terminals.
Oh, you never would believe where those JavaBeans come from, they are shite by little cobblers in a Mimmichog log.
When shalt the good-cents governments of this sod, declare eminent domain of all the cybersees?
"Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." An Applet tree is pretty much useless if it doesn't produce Applets.
"
Do you want to know how
we stopped the time?
There's no reason to know
We stopped the time
for Jeremy Fraser,
he died of a lance of silver
In the middle of the trees
all we taught him was
Freeze, freeze, freeze
when it came to what
dragged from the woods
And dumped in the middle
of our old schoolyard
He was dragged
from the woods and
dumped in the middle
of our old schoolyard
Do you want to know
how we stopped the time?
There's no reason to know
"__ What Would Franz Ferdinand Do?
Space Monkey, Space Monkey
It's time to get real
Everynaut would dance and sway
They've rocked around the Milky Way
They dance around the Borealice
They're Space Truckin' everyday
Come on!
I want to hear Free Bird!
I read the other day that Euro-peons still adore him, while his support here in U.S. is rapidly disappearing. Good, we'll ship his useless butt over there and you can elect him president of europe, or something like that.