Concerning the rich media patent

The San Francisco-based company Balthaser Online has been granted a patent on “Methods, systems, and processes for the design and creation of rich-media applications via the internet”. They claim it covers tools such as Flash, Ajax and XAML when they are accessed over the net. Interesting, since Balthaser was formerly a VP of strategy at Macromedia and used Flash 3 in the late nineties, a couple of years prior to receiving the patent.

This is beyond silly. I wish Al Gore had applied for a patent after claiming to have invented the internet.

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