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Singapore firm claims patent to image search
By Eileen Yu, ZDNet Asia
Tuesday, May 27, 2008 07:22 PM

Singapore company says it owns patent to technology used by millions of online sites worldwide to link graphics and pictures to other Web pages.

SINGAPORE?A local company has laid claims to a technology that Web sites across the globe deploy to link images to other Web pages, and sent out notification letters to several companies demanding to be paid licensing fees.

Dubbing itself ?pioneers of visual search technology?, Vuestar Technologies said it owns the patent to the technology that enables ?Internet searching via visual images?.

In sum, the company implied that any Web site that uses pictures and graphics to link to another site or Web page will need a license from Vuestar.

?Those who use visual images which hyperlink to other Web pages or Web sites?whether on the first page or subsequent pages of a Web site require a Vuestar ?license of use?,? the company said on its site.

Singapore law firm Keystone Law issued a note to its clients Tuesday, urging those that intend to take up a licensing agreement with companies such as Vuestar, to ?carefully examine the terms of such licenses and the claims of the licensor?.

Bryan Tan, director at Keystone Law, said in an e-mail interview: ?Always examine such claims carefully and take legal advice if you are not familiar [with the company?s claims]. Even if you decide to settle a claim, make sure you know what ?rights? you are paying for.? Keystone specializes in technology law.

In his note to the firm?s clients, Tan added: ?We understand that Vuestar has sent invoices for around S$5,000 (US$3,676) to various parties in Singapore asking them to enter into such license agreements, or to cease allowing images on a parties? Web site to be downloaded or used in Singapore.?

?We believe that this development would have a wide-ranging impact on the Internet community in Singapore, given the wide claims made by Vuestar on the intellectual property covered by the patents,? he said. ?Parties operating Web sites, offering Web services or developing Web-based and WAP-based products and services need to be especially careful.?

Vuestar said it does not intend to claim licensing fees from charities and government agencies. The company added that its patent extends beyond Singapore and to ?several parts of the world?.

According to Tan, Vuestar?s patent?tagged under publication number 95940?appears also to have been granted in Australia, New Zealand and United States.

It is not clear how the company?s patent will impact other visual search technology companies such as Like.com, which claims to have developed the ?first true visual search engine?.

Established in August 2004, Like.com also said it owns almost 12 patents in the areas of visual recognition and search.

Patent breach by ?virtually all websites?? Pay up, firm demands
[2008] 27 May_ST

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Title: Patent breach by ?virtually all websites?? Pay up, firm demands
Source: Straits Times
Author: Chua Hian Hou

Legal News Archive

A SINGAPORE firm has threatened to sue websites that use pictures or graphics to link to another page, claiming it owns the patent for a technology used by millions around the world.

In a move that has come under fire from the online community, VueStar Technologies has sent ?invoices? to local website operators asking for thousands of dollars in licensing fees.

The company, which said ?virtually all websites? are infringing on its patent, is also planning to take on giants like Mircosoft and Google.

It is a battle that could, at least in theory, upend the Internet, though intellectual property experts have some doubts that VueStar can actually enforce its claims.

The company said it has been awarded a patent here and in several other countries, including Australia, New Zealand and the United States, for the method of ?locating Web pages by utilising visual images?.

In other words, clicking, scrolling or streaming over a visual image to connect with a website or Web page is an infringement, the company claims on its website.

The technique is the de facto method used to connect websites across the globe, from personal blogs to the biggest search engines.

VueStar managing director Paul Smith said if sites want to keep using images as links, they will have to pay his company – located in a single-unit office at The Adelphi off Coleman Street – between ?$200? and ?millions? annually.

It is a claim, however, that has its doubters.

Technology and intellectual property lawyer Bryan Tan of Keystone Law Corporation said that while VueStar has been granted a patent, it is an extremely wide one.

In fact, ?if the patent is allowed to stand, it will probably bring the (Internet) industry to its knees?. And VueStar?s patent may be contested and overturned in court, he said.

The firm has been sending out invoices to Singapore companies since last week asking them to pay up, said Mr Smith. He declined to say how many have gone out, but there have been ?enough to keep my phone busy?.

Those who do not pay up, warned Mr Smith, face legal action, and his company is ?highly confident that (a court decision) will be in our favour?.

Mr Alvin Koh, who runs the non-profit Arrowana fish
website arofanatics.com, received one of VueStar?s invoices last week for $5,350. He does not intend to pay up and said: ?I would rather close down the site?.

Mr Smith recognises that Mr Koh?s stand will likely be a popular one, and his firm is already girding up for a public backlash.

?Website owners are just upset because they never had to pay for it before,? said Mr Smith.

VueStar will begin enforcing its patent claims in Australia and the US ?soon?, he said, and the firm is also working on invoices for Internet heavyweights like Google and Microsoft.

While governments and charities will need a licence, VueStar will not be asking for payment from these parties, he said.

Mr Tan urged companies to contact their lawyers before ?paying VueStar anything?.

Source: Straits Times ? Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Permission required for reproduction.
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BT Group PLC will appear in a New York federal court on Monday to try to enforce a patent it says covers all hyperlinking. BT claims it invented the hyperlink in 1976, and anyone who uses the World Wide Web owes them money.

If upheld, the patent would give BT the right to collect royalties from any Internet Service Provider.

BT sued Prodigy Communications after the ISP refused to purchase a license for the right to use hyperlinks, the clickable links that connect one web page to another. If Prodigy loses the case, other ISPs would also be charged royalties.

BT was granted the US patent back in 1989. It had been filed when the then-Post Office was developing an online information service, called Prestel. Patents were also granted in other countries, but have since expired.

BT sent letters to 16 ISPs in June of 2000 after someone in the company rediscovered the patent in its files. The patent expires in 2006 but, if upheld, ISPs could owe huge back royalties.

?We believe we have a duty to protect our intellectual property and we would expect companies to pay a reasonable royalty based on the revenues that they have enjoyed through the use of that intellectual property,? a BT spokeswoman told Reuters.
Exclusive right

But critics say the patent claim is overly broad and could drive up the cost of the internet access for users. It could even allow BT to decide who gets to use the web and who does not, they say.

?Is it good public policy to allow patents like this? I think this claim illustrates the problems you?ve got with the patent system,? says James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, a Washington-based advocacy group. ?They would have an exclusive right, the right to stop you cold from using the Web.?

Other critics do not think the patent will hold up. Gregory Aharonian, publisher of the Internet Patent News Service, has written that the patent will probably be invalidated because some people were using similar technology before 1976.

One potential piece of ?prior art? can be seen on a 1968 video clip, where Stanford researchers demonstrated an online editing system that uses hyperlinks.

There’s no shortage of demand for faster wireless, but today’s fastest technologies Wi-Fi, 3G cellular networks, and even the upcoming WiMax?max out at tens or hundreds of megabits per second. So far, no commercial wireless system can beat the raw speed of optical fiber, which can carry tens of gigabits per second.

One way to achieve faster speeds is to harness the millimeter-wavelength frequency of the wireless spectrum, although this usually requires expensive and very complex equipment. Now, engineers at Battelle, a research and development firm based in Columbus, OH, have come up with a simpler way to send data through the air with millimeter-wave technology. Earlier this year, in field tests of a prototype point-to-point system, the team was able to send a 10.6-gigabit-per-second signal between antennas 800 meters apart. And more recently, the researchers demonstrated a 20-gigabit-per-second signal in the lab.

Richard Ridgway, a senior researcher at Battelle, says that the technique could be used to send huge files across college campuses, to quickly set up emergency networks in a disaster, and even to stream uncompressed high-definition video from a computer or set-top box to a display.

Whereas Wi-Fi and cellular networks operate on frequencies of 2.4 to 5.0 gigahertz, millimeter-wave technology exploits a region from about 60 to 100 gigahertz. These waves can carry more data because they oscillate faster. Much of the millimeter region is unlicensed and open for use; it has only been neglected because of the difficulty and expense involved in generating a millimeter-wave signal, encoding information on it, and then decoding at the other end. Usually, data is encoded by first generating a low-frequency wave of around 10 gigahertz, then converting it into a higher-frequency signal. The drawback is that encoding data on a 10-gigahertz signal limits the data rate to about one gigabit per second.

The Battelle team was able to better this by more than a factor of 10 using off-the-shelf optical telecommunication components. The researchers modulated data on two low-frequency laser beams, then combined the two. When these two beams combine, they create a pattern of interference that acts as a 100-gigahertz signal. ?It looks as though we have a laser beam that has a 100-gigahertz frequency,? Ridgway says.

In the past few years, researchers at Georgia Tech, MIT, Intel, and elsewhere have made great strides in developing millimeter-wave devices. Companies such as Intel have even started pushing for standards that could help develop interoperable technologies that operate at 60 gigahertz. And one company, Gigabeam, has rolled out products that can achieve around one gigabit per second using a point-to-point link over a few hundred meters.

Ridgway explains that using telecommunication lasers has two big advantages. First, they are high power, so the resulting millimeter wave is also of relatively high power. Second, the lasers have been engineered to be stable and dependable, producing a signal that doesn?t fluctuate much compared with standard millimeter-wave sources.

Alan Crouch, director of the Communications Technology Lab at Intel, says that the Battelle work is further evidence that millimeter-wave technology could become increasingly important. ?There?s demand for more and more wireless communication solutions in this space,? he says, adding that ?there is strong industry interest.?

But the research may be years away from being deployed in a product. Ridgway explains that, since the system has been put together from existing components, it?s much larger than it ultimately needs to be. In addition, a property of the signal called polarization, which plays a role in encoding data, tends to drift during operation, which means that the system requires attention when running. But Ridgway hopes that, with some more engineering, these problems can be ironed out. ?We?d like to get it to a point where you could just turn on and go,? he says.

The Audi Q7 earned a Top Safety Pick designation from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

This is the most high, which means that the Q7 has received the highest scores in front, side and rear crash tests.

IIHS believes that the Q7 a large SUV and not systematically rate vehicles in this class. However, IIHS tests conducted at the request of Auditors, which presupposes that we wanted to see if it measured until IIHS considers mid-size SUVs – such as cars Acura MDX, BMW X5, Mercedes-Benz M-Class, Volvo XC90 and Lincoln MKX, Who are all also Top Safety Picks.