BT's bid to patent hyperlinks breaks

A US JUDGE has dismissed BT's attempt to patent hyperlinks, bringing to an end hopes that the British giant might have stumbled on a huge cash cow.

A judge said late yesterday that BT's case against Prodigy should be dismissed, according to Cnet.

BT asked Prodigy and a number of other ISPs to pay a licence for using hyperlinks a couple of years back, but was told to get on its bike, which prompted the firm to try its hand at legal action.

The giant had claimed that BT boffins had "invented" the hyperlink years before hyperlinks came into being, based on a system it patented in 1989 and used internally to access data from central servers.

Some observers saw BT's action as somewhat chancy.

But now a US court has dismissed the case, BT will just have to go back to its less lucrative business, such as making people install ISDN in remote areas of Britain on the grounds that installing the kit necessary to make DSL is too expensive.

There will be a huge flood of public sympathy for BT here in Britain, as it is one of our favourite corporate icons and is widely seen as a great benefactor in our onward push to make Tony Blair's "Broadband Britain" a reality.

Honest-to-god. µ