wireless internet provider Wayport sued for patent infringement
Austin's Wayport has been sued by a small New Hampshire company, PowerOasis, Inc.
PowerOasis appears to manufacture and sell a line of email/data ports that are placed within public places such as airports.
According to Patent Office Records, PowerOasis has three assigned patents and the primary inventor, Charles Schelberg, appears to have an additional related patent that is recorded as being assigned to PowerTel, Inc.
Wayport, which provides internet access on a pay-as-you go basis, was started in 1996. PowerOasis' earliest patent -- 5,812,643 -- has an effective filing date of Febraury 6, 1997 and all subsequently issued patents relate back to the February 6, 1997 filing date.
This patent lawsuit is already taking a lot of heat from the anti-software patent folk who argue that this technology was obvious "because no one had ever thought of it before" (sarcasm implied).
For information, the purpose of the patent system is to protect inventions that are novel, useful and nonobvious at the time the patent application is filed. The test is not that "it would have been obvious" or "it would have been obvious to try" -- rather, that the invention was indeed obvious or known at the time the application was filed. The earliest claimed filing date is te Feb. 6, 1997 filing date -- unless the invention was obvious at that point in time, it doesn't matter when the application was filed.
9-23-04 UPDATE: We have received so many questions and search engine referrals from people wanting information about this case that we want to share free access to the court filings in Poweroasis v. Wayport (04-cv-12023-RWZ) with everyone. Below are links to all of the documents (a ZIP file containing all of the court filings is here). All documents are in PDF format.
Poweroasis v. Wayport Complaint
Poweroasis v. Wayport Motion for Prelimnary Injunction
Poweroasis v. Wayport Memorandum in Support of Prelim Injunction
Affidavits