LEGAL 2.5 KB

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  1. Please be apprised of the following Legal Notices:
  2. A) The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has
  3. ruled that the Netscape Navigator code does not infringe Wang's U.S.
  4. Patent No. 4,751,669 ("the '669 Patent") because: 1) HTML is not
  5. Videotex as defined by the '669 patent; 2) web servers are not central
  6. suppliers; and 3) Navigator does not "connect," as defined by the '669
  7. Patent, to web servers on the Internet. Wang may appeal this decision to
  8. the Federal Circuit. Wang contended that its Patent disclosing a
  9. "Videotex" system, is infringed by the following functionality in the
  10. Netscape Navigator code: 1) the animated logo and status line indicators
  11. --See Claims 1,8 and 9; 2) the "File Save As" function --See Claims
  12. 23-27; 3) Bookmarks and Rename Bookmarks in the Properties window --See
  13. Claims 20-22; 4) storing HTML, GIF, and JPEG files and adding filename
  14. extensions --See Claim 38
  15. B) Intermind owns pending U.S. patent applications on communications
  16. systems which employ metadata ("channel objects") to define a control
  17. structure for information transfer. The Netscape code does not infringe
  18. as released; however, modifications which utilize channel objects as
  19. described by Intermind should be considered carefully. The following is
  20. a statement from Intermind: "Intermind's claims fundamentally involve
  21. the use of a control structure to automate communications. ...The
  22. essence of Intermind's top claim is that two devices sender and receiver
  23. have persistent storage, communicate over a network, and exchange a
  24. control structure including metadata which describes: 1) what
  25. information is to be updated, 2) when to update this information, and 3)
  26. how to transfer the updated information. In addition, at least the
  27. receiving device must be able to process the metadata in order to
  28. perform the update determination and transfer. Any digital
  29. communications system which incorporates all of these elements will be
  30. covered by Intermind's patents." See Intermind.com.
  31. C) Stac, Inc., and its licensing agent Hi/fn, own several patents which
  32. disclose data compression methods implementing an LZS compression
  33. algorithm, including U.S. Patent Nos. 4,701,745 and 5,016, 009 ("the
  34. Stac Patents"). The Netscape Communicator code does not perform
  35. compression. If you modify the Netscape source code to perform
  36. compression, please take notice of the Stac Patents.
  37. D) Netscape Communications Corporation ("Netscape") does not guarantee
  38. that any source code or executable code available from the mozilla.org
  39. domain is Year 2000 compliant.