W3C in damage control mode over Eolas fallout

W3C to patent office: Eolas lawsuit doesn’t validate. W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of HTML and the web, today presented the U.S. Patent Office with prior art establishing that the Eolas patent is invalid and should be re-examined “to eliminate this unjustified impediment to the operation of the web.” [Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]

Timmy asks the USPO to review the 1998 letter from the W3C to the USPO about prior art. The letter cites 1993 documents about including embedded programs in the HTML spec.