Exactly a year ago Intermind Corp was boldly billing its self as the new Netscape. Now it is merely a handful of employees with a patent on its push technology, intent on pursuing the very companies that have brought it to its knees in the form of licensing agreements or ultimately, if that’s unsuccessful, suing them for patent infringement. The Seattle-based company has slimmed down from about 80 employees earlier this year to a tenth of that, but this week received its first patent for its channel- based push technology. Peter Heymann, chairman and co-founder of the company, which is backed by two of Craig McCaw’s investment companies, among others, admits he was surprised by the speed that rivals sprung up so soon after Intermind’s launch. The company says the patent covers first generation push technology in which files are exchanged between providers and consumers automatically. Specifically it deals with metadata – data about data – which are exchanged between publishers and consumers prior to any content files being exchanged. Intermind says the patent covers various aspects of second generation push as well, by which it means such things as more control structures that can be added to channel objects to give publishers more feedback from its users, says Heymann. Intermind adds ominously that it believes it is unlikely that there will be any push technology products in the next several years that will not require a license from Intermind. The company says the US Patent & Trademark Office approved all 26 claims in the patent application. Intermind said the technologies specifically affected are likely to be those using Microsoft Corp’s Channel Definition Format (CDF), or the rival Resource Definition Format (RDF) proposed by Netscape Communications Corp. CDF is in Internet Explorer and RDF in Netscape’s Netcaster push technology. Both are based on XML and both are being pored over by World Wide Consortium (W3C) working groups and Intermind sits on the group considering RDF. The company promises that licensing terms will be reasonable and that early takers will be rewarded with cheaper deals. In August two more push companies got into a similarly litigious spat. Novadigm Inc revealed that it had filed suit against Marimba Inc back in April over Marimba’s submission of its Distribution and Replication Protocol (DRP) to the W3C for consideration. That lawsuit was over fractional differencing; the way of identifying which software needs updating on a client desktop. Novadigm says the technology is its own and there fore not Marimba’s to give away to start with. That case is still pending and Novadigm had no comment on Intermind’s move.
