Yikes! A company called SBC Intellectual Property is claiming to have a US patent covering the concept of navigation bars (like the one on the left-side of this page) in web sites. Now they’ve started demanding licence fees from small e-commerce sites. The patent seems very broad and un-innovative to me. Hopefully, like BT’s attempt to patent hyperlinks, it’ll be struck-down.
Related madness: RIM are sued for transmitting emails over wireless networks. And Palm go down to Xerox over its graffiti. So lets get this straight – the idea of writing in a “single, unbroken stroke” is new and innovative is it?