Comments on: You breached our patent by using images as links – says Vuestar

By: paskal

paskal — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 05:13:40 +0000

ppl get more creative in order to get more money. but this kind of patent? gosh it’s horrible!

By: beefstew

beefstew — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:52:25 +0000

Hey everyone,

I just want to ask if this refer also to image linking within a website itself and NOT outside to the other website?

By: hong leong

hong leong — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:47:03 +0000

I think in their case study, they knew law to law. They can never fight it out. with the likes of Lucasfilm and Sony, so they kept on throwing out as cantonese would say, seih mau (dead cats). They based their OS partially on Linux. That made enforcement not only virtually impossible, but it also meant the cost to the plaintiff was multiplied by a few thousand times as suddenly there are so many people to sue. So at the end of the day it just comes down to a cost/time/benefit calculus. Today its a free market. You can even copy star trek and even disney characters and everyone knows its just impossible to enforce.

But to do all this, you really need good lawyers who know how to run big and small circles

By: hong leong

hong leong — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 04:20:32 +0000

To fight this effectively. You need legal muscle. And plenty of it. This is not abt fairness. It’s all about weighing the situation and whacking it right. If you do it right. They die. You live. If you do it wrong. You die. They live.The way I see this whole saga. Its a throw back to the time when the brotherhood once copied chunks of star wars and BSG plans to flesh out their game in HK. Guess what? The were threatened with legal action. What did they do? They fought back, by quibbling on minor details, small issues and microscopic points of law. It just went on and on and on and on. But as I said. To do all this. What is required is loads of legal muscle.

By: Oldbird

Oldbird — Fri, 30 May 2008 05:50:19 +0000

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? I quote “Mr Langford claimed he came up with the idea in 2000, before Internet bandwidth allowed for images and other multimedia to be used extensively.”

Where were these people in 2000? When does people started to use the internet? I’ve developed a rich-content multimedia website mainly for video streaming in 1999. And back then, its already a norm as many websites has already done that. And in 1999, people have started to move to flash 3. What is the so-called TECHNOLOGY? Is there even one?

So who own the patent to href before Mr Ron start to realise and learned how to surf the internet, prior to 2000?

Please forgive this people who grant this patent, they probably dont even know that computer actually already exists at that time, let alone the Internet..

By: Texas

Texas — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:51:26 +0000

I couldn’t agree more with Desmond. See how vaguely VueStar has explained their patent. Their patent only covers specific areas, but they have not disclosed anything, hoping to mislead.

Next, they will tell you they invented the “a href” tags.

By: Desmond

Desmond — Wed, 28 May 2008 01:35:20 +0000

I read the patent. It describes a specific method for returning thumbnails of website pages in the results page of a search engine. The thumbnails are then used as links to the website to facilitate the user’s choice of link. Since it mentions HTML in the prior art discussion it is absolutely clear that they are not referring to linking to another site via ANY image. The “visual images” have to be either “mini-images” of the target website pages or some icon or logo FROM the website which are also LINKS. This doesn’t cover anything like “nearly all websites”. In my opinion the patent shouldn’t have been granted, but it is being aggressively pushed well beyond its originally intended scope.

By: Uzairubiah

Uzairubiah — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:10:59 +0000

How can they be granted for that ridiculous patent? This is the most retard patent I’ve ever heard.

By: Phalgun

Phalgun — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:58:29 +0000

This is just totally insane. What about Web 2.0? No using images in header to link your about or archive pages?
What,s next? You will find prepaid coupons from Vuestar in eBay. 100$ coupon for 1 image you link per month.

By: cDub

cDub — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:16:06 +0000

More importantly, no porn.

By: Rice Blogger

Rice Blogger — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:41:00 +0000

so no text link and no banner link?

By: BoltClock

BoltClock — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:28:26 +0000

Let me pray to God this very minute that this be just a stupid scam site otherwise the name of Singapore my homeland is really going to suffer in the eyes and minds of the entire web world.

By: Leyton Jay

Leyton Jay — Tue, 27 May 2008 12:45:48 +0000

It’s all very well having a patent but you cant let something spread unmonitored, become popular and then try to cream money off of it. It’s not only unethical, but wouldnt stand up in a court of law:

The London Metropolitan Police Force own the rights to the blue Police Call Box (TARDIS) used in TV series Doctor Who since 1963. However in 2002 a court declared that because the BBC have used it for merchandising since the late 1970s without a challenge from the Met, the rights to the box should be transferred to the BBC.

By: ifan

ifan — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:25:13 +0000

Good ideas with vision? Bullshit.

“Stupid ideas for money”. That’s the correct one:)

By: hongkiat

hongkiat — Tue, 27 May 2008 10:05:30 +0000

@David nothing to do with their server. They are claiming image-linking-webpage as a technology under their patent. ‘Implementing’ it basically infringes it. I find myself foolish even for typing that, how can someone actually practice that as a rule.

@Cincau Advertisement industry? We are talking about the entire WWW. Most of us know they are unlikely to succeed, but thinking what will happen to the Internet if they made it, it’s fun :-)

By: CincauHangus

CincauHangus — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:36:36 +0000

david: yeah, it would be similar to RIAA/MPAA but on a global scale.

By: CincauHangus

CincauHangus — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:30:38 +0000

in the words of a apek gamer: GG LIAO!

and if it goes happen, i dont know what will happen to the advertisement industry where mostly graphical links attracts people..

I’ll wonder what will happen to online image hosting services..

By: David Gonterman

David Gonterman — Tue, 27 May 2008 08:26:15 +0000

Does this mean any graphic from their servers used as a link, or any graphic _period_ used as a link? Because if that’s the latter, they’re going to have a worse problem than the RIAA.

“You can’t sue ALL of us! Believe me, some tried.”