Disc Link, a subsidiary of Acacia Technologies Group (an organization that basically buys up patents so that it can sue anyone who violates them), claims that it's patent number 6,314,574 covers hyperlinks from documents stored on a CD that send users to sites on the web.
Last week, Disc Link filed suit against Borland, Business Objects, Compuware, Corel, Eastman Kodak, Novell, Oracle, and SAP, claiming they all violate its patent.via Download Squad
The patent was filed on Nov 8, 1998.
I first put a hyperlink to the Web on a commercial CD in 1994. (The proceedings of the Software Development Conference. And, yeah, to the Web.) I continued the practice on several subsequent CDs that shipped before '98. I have copies of several of these CDs sitting on my shelf.
I can't see how the claims of the patent cover such links, but if anyone involved in the lawsuit thinks I could be of help, let me know.
Coincidentally, I have a press release in my Inbox from the "Coalition for Patent Fairness" praising the Patent Reform Act of 2007. Maybe, but the bullet item "Reform to make it easier to file a patent application without the inventor's cooperation;" doesn't seem very nice. Intellectual Property legislation has been such a disaster in the past decade that I fear that the only thing worse than the current patent system would be "reform" written by the same people who brought us the DMCA.