During the 2001 DEMO conference, Neil Balthaser, chairman and CEO of Balthaser Online Inc. performed an onstage demonstration of balthaser:fx (since renamed to Pro:Fx), an online tool box for users designing Web sites. Probably lost in the background was United States Patent 7,000,180, filed 9 February 2001. That patent was granted to Balthaser on Valentine's Day, 14 February 2006. The abstract of that patent says...

Rich-media applications are designed and created via the Internet. A host computer system, containing processes for creating rich-media applications, is accessed from a remote user computer system via an Internet connection. User account information and rich-media component specifications are uploaded via the established Internet connection for a specific user account. Rich-media applications are created, deleted, or modified in a user account via the established Internet connection. Rich-media components are added to, modified in, or deleted from scenes of a rich-media application based on information contained in user requests. After creation, the rich-media application is viewed or saved on the host computer system, or downloaded to the user computer system via the established Internet connection. In addition, the host process monitors the available computer and network resources and determines the particular component, scene, and application versions, if multiple versions exist, that most closely match the available resources.

Balthaser contends that this patent covers the design and creation of most rich-media applications used over the Internet. And, Balthaser Online, Inc. says they will pursue licensing of this technology which has become somewhat ubiquitous over the Internet in the time between 2001 and 2006.

Balthaser is reported to feel that since he began developing the underlying methods and processes so early that he can therefore prove the patent describes a novel and nonobvious invention; two things necessary to get a patent.

It's unclear at the moment how Balthaser will pursue the licensing now that the patent has been issued. It's also not clear who or if anyone will choose to fight the patent. To my reading the patent does not cover media developed off the Web and simply shown over the Web but people with umbrella patents tend to take broader views of their rights until told otherwise by the courts or the Patent Office when it reverses itself after really examining the patent as it should have in the first place.

What is clear is that no matter what happens with this newest "umbrella" patent on what would seem to the casual observer to be an obvious extension of basic Web technology that the patent system in the U.S. is broken and needs to be fixed.