On June 19, 2000 British telecommunications giant British Telecom "discovered" that it owned the patent behind hyperlink technology (U.S. Patent Number 4,873,662), despite not exercising the patent for some 14 years. Why? Because it simply forgot about it among the 15,000 other patents it held, despite the fact that it runs out by 2006. Recognizing that it just might have a claim on a core technology upon which the online world survives and thrives, what did BT do? It promptly sent out legal notices to nearly 20 of the largest U.S. Internet service providers, demanding payment for years of uncompensated use-- and potential patent violation-- of its technology, by charging licensing fees to the ISPs, but not their individual subscribers, and would go so far as to file suit in a U.S. federal court to protect its interests. Why did it go after ISPs and other large firms in the U.S.? Because it waited so long to assert its patent, BT lost its ability to challenge the use of hyperlinking technology on a global basis in 1998, but not in the U.S., which grants patent protections on the date the patent is filed (in 1976 in the U.S.), and not the date it is actually granted (which was 1989). What did BT's hyperlink patent actually cover? The patent filing was for "an information handling system in which information is derived from a computer at a remote point and transmitted via the public telephone network to terminal apparatus." In other words, linked text on computers that access the Internet via a modem and telephone line?... BT actually had implemented the technology on its Prestel viewdata service, a 1980s menu driven system that connected users to a range of community and limited government information service options, much like the community networks and bulletin board systems (BBS) you might recall. The key feature of Prestel was the ability to select a link, in order to reach another set of menu options on the same "page" of text presented to the user.. A number of critics, however, had contended that BT's technology might actually have had direct antecedents that date back about 1,000 years. One key point to remember about patents in the U.S.: they cover new and useful inventions whose developments are not obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art that developed the tool. In other words, patents only apply to new items or modifications to items that are more than superficial changes, that could (or would not) be thought of by someone versed in the basic trade that produced the item in question in the first place. Interlinked text that is simultaneously exists in multiple contexts, for example, can be seen as far back as the Middle Ages, when scribes put their commentaries in the margins of manuscripts, if not 196 B.C. when the valued Rosetta Stone was carved, combining three scripts (hieroglyphs, Demotic, and ancient Greek) to represent the same text. The BT patent filing never explicitly mentions hyperlinked text per se, but does mention *the system* through which text is sent out via a central computer to terminals in order to present otherwise non-displayable information (such as characteristics and properties). Guess what: the technology for this had already been in use by British television stations since 1974, as a way to simultaneously broadcast color settings while news was being displayed on television sets; and by 1965 when Douglas Engelbart, William English, and John Rulifson and their team at the Augmentation Research Centre of the Stanford Research Institute had begun using the term "hyperlinks" to refer to a system of navigating through text which created "live" cross-references via an early version of point-and-click technology called NLS (On-Line System). By not explicitly stating a patent over the technology around linked text itself, which affords people the means to navigate pages of text via some form of highlighted characters, BT might have been asserting patent protections over a technology it didn't "own". If indeed a patent is asserted too broadly around technology-- that is, if it is asserted around technology that has already been in place and used before a patent is filed (also known as "prior art")-- the claims can be tossed aside. Skip ahead (or back) winter 2002, when BT faced off against online service Prodigy (coincidentally, a subsidiary of American telecom heavyweight SBC Communications), in U.S. District Court. BT laid out the basis of its patent claims against Prodigy Communications in February. It received a shock in March, when the district court judge delivered a Markman ruling (a crucial part of a patent infringement case, wherein the validity and parameters of a claim are laid bare, ultimately influencing the nature and amount of damages that can be sought), which said that most of BT's claims were not valid. The ruling held that BT's patent claim rested on the technology around storing information on a central server accessible to multiple users at remote terminals via the telephone lines of a telephone network. After the ruling, Prodigy filed for summary judgment (done before a verdict is issued when the facts of a case are not in dispute, and one party is able to receive judgment as a matter of law; both sides had the option to do so within 30 days of the ruling). Adding insult to BT's injury, the same district court judge granted Prodigy's 8/23/02 summary judgment request, finding that no jury would ever be able to outline case for patent infringement, not only because the Internet was not the core technology at work in BT's patent, but (1) because the information stored under BT's patent did not contain chunks of information, and (2) because Prodigy could not be held to blame for simply providing Internet access to its users. The ruling puts a sever dent in BT's attempt to hold some entity accountable for lost revenue of technology it claims it owned at some point. Even if BT had won and was only able to collect licensing fees from ISPs, the costs would still have ultimately been passed along to website and online service owners, and their users. It is important also to not simply to frame this an issue of non-U.S. versus U.S. interests. There have been repeated attempts by U.S. firms to do exactly what BT did, albeit along different lines (TeleDynamic's patent application around any automated information gathering and forwarding service that provides information to third parties) and with varying degrees of broadness (Amazon.com's patent for "one-click" systems through which users can conduct information transactions and an online customer referral system enabling websites to engage in affiliate merchant programs). Interestingly, there is also an increasing amount of legal pressure to prevent deep linking by websites, the practice through which visitors to one web page are taken to specific pages and documents on other sites, bypassing homepages or other navigational screens in the process. Often, deep linking becomes an issue when corporate sites, and their archives, are linked to by other corporate sites for profit, or by nonprofit or individual sites for protest, criticism, satire, or simply reference purposes. Deep linking is increasingly protested by corporate sites, which feel that outside co-opting of specific pointers to information they provide for fee, not only is revenue lost, but the source and contextual information is lost, due to inconsistent standards of linking. Yet those who deep link simply point out that it is much like acknowledging a citation for research purposes, or providing directions from pages on site to another to help make it easier for users to find both what they want and what they need. In addition, they point out that corporate and for-profit sites themselves often deep link to other content-- including that of nonprofit and individual sites. For example

• a Danish court ruled against online news aggregator site Newsbooster in early July 2002, barring it from including links to specific stories from any of the 28 papers belonging to the Danish Newspaper Publisher's Association in the story briefs it provided.
• nonprofit radio giant National Public Radio had tried to implement a term of use policy to prevent deep linking to specific content without its express consent, but later revamped the policy under much public pressure, to state only that it deep linking will be allowed, but that NPR still has discretion to withdraw permission for any link to its site or content.

More often than not, threats of legal action usually don't result in full-fledged suits, and are often resolvable through terms of use statements on websites. When threats of copyright violations are raised, it is usually in those instances when a lot of information from a high visibility website believes that it stands to lose a lot of money and site traffic from users and the broader public. An additional concern arises for those sites that have either content-sharing or syndication agreements, or provide password protected content spaces (including message boards, classifieds, and chat services) involving third-party content that usually has copyright or trademark protection. Those companies who want to ensure that such relationships are maintained may feel compelled to prevent outside links that could be construed as unlicensed use of content. Other sites may simply want to protect it's image to the greater online public by making sure it is not identified in any manner that detracts or conflicts with its mission or audience, or to guide or control a user's experience once on the site in question. For those sites that feel the need to state how, when and by whom they should be linked to, a growing backlash against more aggressive linking limitations is starting to appear. One of the more visible and notable efforts is John Marshall Law School (Chicago, IL) professor David Sorkin's webblog, Don't Link to Us. This resource provides a regularly updated "shame board" of direct links to the substantially restrictive linking policies of a number of corporate (particularly media), government, and nonprofit websites, usually those requiring permission to link to a site's home page, or to specific pages with either trademark or copyright protections. The problem with challenging, much less enforcing action against deep linking is that it is considered a practice more so than a core or extended technology, and one that has no set accepted method. It is often impractical to locate every site that links back to you or a specific page, and to police them all on a regular basis to ensure that such links cease to exist. In most cases, deep linkers who provide a clear, consistent citation approach that helps identify the source, date, and nature of the deep link fare much better in their relationships with linked-to sites. Both the BT and deep linking examples highlight trends towards attempts to assert ownership or intellectual property claims over the very structure of the information and communications systems the online public takes for granted from time to time as a free, public, or open environment.