NEW YORK — When Al Gore described the World Wide Web as the information superhighway, few people figured he meant a toll road — but that's exactly what could happen if a surprise announcement from a UK telecommunications company comes to fruition.
British Telecommunications claims they originated the idea of hyperlinks and patented the idea back in 1976. The patent was granted in 1989, but as the Internet had not yet become a global phenomenon, the British telephone company did not see an obvious application for it and forgot about it.
Recently, however, they rediscovered the patent and decided it could be profitable. Last week some of America's largest Internet providers received correspondence from BT stating their intention to begin charging for giving users access to hyperlink technology.
Ed Hansen, spokesperson for Earthlink Inc., the second largest ISP in the United States, confirmed BT had contacted the company but refused to speculate on whether they would pay up. "It's hard to envision something like that happening, but it is definitely possible," said Hansen.
Few details of BT's request are available and it is unclear if the company would demand payment for a license fee to use the technology or payment per subscriber. Currently AOL claims to have 23 million subscribers worldwide and Earthlink Inc. (which owns both the Earthlink and Mindspring ISPs) say that by the end of the year they will provide service to more than 5 million subscribers. Hansen did confirm "The scope of what they are asking is large." If BT is successful in their claims, costs could be passed along to the consumer.
So where did the technology for hyperlinks come from and who should get the credit for it? Hansen says, "What they are asking us to do is pay for a technology that was actually adopted for use on the Internet by the people who designed the original Web browser Mosaic, and was used also on the Mac platform."
In fact the technology has been around significantly longer than that. According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) back in 1945 Vanevar Bush wrote about a mechanical device called a Memex which could follow links between microfiche documents. In the 1960s Doug Engelbart invented an 'oNLine System' which enabled users to browse hypertext, edit documents and send e-mail.
Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of Web language HTML, is frequently credited with inventing hypertext but he sites computer visionary Ted Nelson as the inspiration for hyperlinks. Nelson first coined the term hypertext in Literary Machines in 1965.
Andreis van Dam developed the Hypertext Editing System at Brown University in 1967 that was later used to produce Apollo space program documentation. In an e-mail interview with FOXNews.com, he commented on BT's announcement.
He says, "I can't begin to understand what they could patent given my various early seventies publications on hyperlink implementation." He also sites his Hypertext Editing System and the work of Doug Engelbert as examples of hyperlinking pre-dating the BT claim.
Van Dam told FOXNews.com that he was firmly opposed to making users pay for technology used in the fundamental structure of the Web. "I devoutly hope public opinion will force BT to withdraw their plan. I have not seen what BT claims so I can't address the "legitimacy" in a legal sense. I'm just reacting to the implications of yet another patent on something terribly basic to the health of the Internet."
W3C is unable to comment on BT's announcement because the company is a member of the consortium.
BT claims that they filed the original patent in 1976 after working on a linked information system called Prestel when the company was known as the General Post Office. The patent runs out in 2006 but some Web watchers are concerned that once a pattern of paying for previously freely available technologies is established it will be hard to break it.
One thing is certain, BT faces a public relations battle with Web users who are unlikely to take kindly to any restrictions on technologies they have come to take for granted. And the repercussions of BT's actions on future Web developments could be severe.
As van Dam, one of the original Fathers of the Internet puts it, "Anyone successfully claiming a patent on such fundamental technology, both the primitive hypertext facilities available today on the web, and the much more sophisticated and useful ones being designed into xpointer and xlink by W3C, could hold the world to ransom."
Japanese arch-rivals Matsushita Electric Industrial and Sony Corp are preparing to go head-to-head in a battle similar to one they fought nearly 20 years ago, this time for world domination in memory devices.
Last time, the world's top two consumer electronics makers played their video cassette formats off against each other, with Matsushita's VHS triumphing over Sony's Beta.
Now Sony has the chance to erase the memory of that defeat as the Japanese companies launch their battle plans for next-generation memory devices, yet many analysts say it may have to wave the white flag again.
The two firms are trying to make their products the industry standard, thus seizing control of a market in related digital consumer goods likely to be worth 2.5 trillion yen ($23.69 billion) by 2003.
Matsushita will on June 30 roll out a flash memory card-based audio player, a next-generation audio system and a recordable DVD player, all incompatible with Sony's technology.
The major battle appears to be over flash memory cards, which can be used to record data on digital cameras, music players and next-generation mobile phones and computers.
"We expect the global memory card market will explode 100-fold in less than 10 years. Let's say we are in a marathon race, and Sony is just 100 metes ahead of us," said Matsushita DVD business development director Sakon Nagasaki.
Matsushita is playing catch-up, but some analysts predict it can see off Sony again with an open format strategy that has attracted nearly 90 manufacturers worldwide, against Sony's 58.
"Matsushita has a better chance of winning since it has more high-profile collaborators," said ING Baring Securities analyst Kazushige Hata. "The conqueror will get an advantage in moving ahead with new products suitable for the digital network era."
Other analysts say the result may not be as clear-cut as the knockout blow delivered by VHS to Beta.
"The two standards may co-exist," said Motoharu Sone, an analyst at Tsubasa Securities. "Consumers will use different systems for different purposes."
Race Starts in Earnest
Matsushita, whose brands include Panasonic and Technics, will on June 30 launch a 55-gram audio player that can be worn as a watch, dangled around the neck, offering one hour of CD-quality sound with a removable 64 megabyte Secured Digital (SD) Memory Card.
The postage stamp-sized SD Card, developed by Matsushita, Toshiba Corp and U.S.-based SanDisk Corp, is smaller than Sony's chewing gum-sized Memory Stick (MS).
Sony has been using MS in digital camcorders, "Walkman" music players and robotic pet entertainer "Aibo" for about two years.
It plans to ship 10 million MS units and eight million MS-compatible products in the business year to next March.
"We are behind Sony, but we aim to grab 30 percent market share through our strong partnerships," said Nagasaki.
Partners in the SD group include Microsoft Corp, Eastman Kodak Co and Toyota Motor Corp while Sony has enlisted General Motors Corp and Palm Computing Inc.
"Many hardware and software makers, including the movie and music industries, will promote this format," Nagasaki said.
Speed of Thought the Essence
"The important thing is not the number of licensees but how quickly we can come up with products using MS," Sony's MS division senior general manager Masaharu Yanaga said.
"Later this year, we plan to introduce a lot of innovative consumer items such as mobile phones that can play music." Sony aims to win half the market for flash memory cards.
Matsushita plans to add SD-based computers, mobile phones and home appliances in the same period.
"Matsushita, which has a technological advantage in mobile phones, is likely to attract many more consumers once it launches a new phone system compatible with the SD Memory Card," said UBS Warburg analyst Masahiro Ono.
Global demand for flash memory cards is seen growing to an annual 250 billion yen in sales with related consumer products swelling to 2.5 trillion yen in 2003. In both instances, that is a 10-fold rise on 1998.
Kazuharu Miura, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research, said: "The SD group will attain superiority due to its greater number of partners and Matsushita's strong position in the mobile phone market."
Playing Out DVD Scenario
They also stand in opposite camps of the high-quality audio formats that will eventually replace CDs and in the field of DVD recorders, heir to the video cassette recorder.
Later this month, Matsushita will launch a DVD audio player, incompatible with Sony's SACD (Super Audio CD) launched in May 1999, and its first recordable DVD player using DVD-RAM (random access memory) that is supported by Toshiba and Hitachi Ltd but incompatible with the Pioneer-led DVD-RW (rewriteable) format that Sony intends to support.
Analysts predict the loser will have to make a compromise over DVDs and favor Matsushita as the likely victor.
"The winner will enjoy a technological advantage enabling it to develop new products, based on the standard, earlier than competitors," UBS's Ono said.
"But the loser can quickly catch up by adopting the other format, just as Sony did with VCRs. Both manufacturers will stand solid in the digital age."
