So in this case the inventor did make some money off it at some point.
Abelow has a bunch of other patents that he seems to have never used himself but just sells to these various interlinked companies that then sue people. Another patent, 5251294 covers anyone using rollover menus in javascript. If you've got those and aren't paying WebVention a license fee (which is a shell company of IntellectualVentures, the company that sold to Lodsys) you might be in trouble, well except it seems to have expired in 2010, but they had a good ride up to then.
Agreed I have to say its not to say that Abelow is not part of the problem, from looking at his site I have to say he's part of the systemic patent troll system. From what I can tell he just ideates and then patents without ever building anything.
So in this case the inventor did make some money off it at some point.
Abelow has a bunch of other patents that he seems to have never used himself but just sells to these various interlinked companies that then sue people. Another patent, 5251294 covers anyone using rollover menus in javascript. If you've got those and aren't paying WebVention a license fee (which is a shell company of IntellectualVentures, the company that sold to Lodsys) you might be in trouble, well except it seems to have expired in 2010, but they had a good ride up to then.
discussion: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2609936/javascript-css-ro...
analysis: http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?i...
litigation: http://news.priorsmart.com/webvention-v-abercrombie-fitch-lX...