Private company
Eolas
Logo: The logo is from the following website: [1] [2], Non-free logo, via Wikipedia3
American technology firm
Eolas (Irish pronunciation: meaning "Knowledge"; bacronym: "Embedded Objects Linked Across Systems") is a United States technology firm formed as a spin-off from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in order to commercialize UCSF's patents for work done there by Eolas' co-founders, as part of the Visible Embryo Project. The company was founded in 1994 by Michael Doyle, Rachelle Tunik, David Martin, and Cheong Ang from the UCSF Center for Knowledge Management (CKM).2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0
Last updated Oct 21, 2026.
Overview
- HeadquartersTyler1
- Websitewww.eolas.com
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Eolas (Irish pronunciation: [ˈoːl̪ˠəsˠ], meaning "Knowledge"; bacronym: "Embedded Objects Linked Across Systems") is a United States technology firm formed as a spin-off from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in order to commercialize UCSF's patents for work done there by Eolas' co-founders, as part of the Visible Embryo Project. The company was founded in 1994 by Michael Doyle, Rachelle Tunik, David Martin, and Cheong Ang from the UCSF Center for Knowledge Management (CKM). The company was created at the request of UCSF, and was founded by the inventors of the university's patents.2
Products and brands
In September 1995, the founders of Eolas released WebRouser, an advanced Web browser based on Mosaic that implemented plugins, client-side image maps, web-page-defined browser buttons and menus, embedded streaming media, and cloud computing capabilities. In 2005, Eolas released 'Muse', a "multimedia doodling application," which it later licensed to Iconicast LLC, to use as the basis for an iOS app called 'HueTunes'. The HueTunes app was featured at the DEMO conference in 2013. In 2012, Eolas developed the Einstein Brain Atlas iPad app for the National Museum of Health and Medicine Chicago, which was named the Gizmodo App of the Day. According to the Eolas Web site, their current products include two health-education systems: the AnatLab Visible Human, used to teach gross anatomy to medical students, and AnatLab Histology, an iOS and Android app that provides mobile access to a complete collection of ultra-high-resolution histology microscopic slide images.
From Wikipedia’s article on Eolas, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4
Controversies and legal
Litigation
Microsoft declined to license the technology when it was offered to them (and others) in 1994.
In 1999, Eolas filed suit in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois against Microsoft over the validity and use of the patent. Eolas won the initial case in August 2003 and was awarded damages of $521 million from Microsoft for infringement. The District Court reaffirmed the jury's decision in January 2004.
In June 2004, Microsoft appealed the case to the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In March 2005, the District Court judgment was remanded, but the infringement and damages parts of the case were upheld. The appeals court ruled that the two Viola-related exhibits that had been thrown out of the original trial needed to be shown to a jury in a retrial. Microsoft quickly filed for a rehearing.
In October 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear Microsoft's appeal, leaving intact the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of Eolas with respect to foreign sales of Microsoft Windows. However, the remand to District Court had not been heard yet.
In May 2007, the USPTO agreed to allow Microsoft to argue ownership of the patent after they reissued a Microsoft patent that covers the same concepts as outlined in the Eolas patent, and contains wording that mirrors the Eolas patent.
The USPTO ruled in favor of Eolas on that matter in September 2007.
Read the full text
Microsoft and Eolas agreed in July 2007 to delay a pending re-trial, in order to negotiate a settlement. On August 27, 2007, Eolas reported to its shareholders that a settlement had been reached and that Eolas expected to pay a substantial dividend as a result; the exact amount and terms of the settlement were not disclosed.
In October 2009, Eolas sued a number of large corporations for infringement of the same patent. The 22 sued corporations include Adobe, Amazon.com, Apple, Argosy Publishing, Blockbuster, CDW Corp., Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, The Go Daddy Group, Google, J.C. Penney Co. Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., New Frontier Media Inc., Office Depot Inc., Perot Systems Corp., Playboy Enterprises International Inc., Rent-A-Center Inc., Staples Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc., Texas Instruments Inc., Yahoo! Inc., and YouTube LLC. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, writing in Computerworld's opinion section, called Eolas a patent troll after these lawsuits were initiated. As of June 2011, a number of these companies, including Texas Instruments, Oracle and JPMorgan Chase have signed licensing deals with Eolas, while others are still litigating.
In February 2012, a Texas jury found that some of the claims in two of Eolas' patents were invalid after testimony from several defendants including Tim Berners-Lee and Pei-Yuan Wei, credited as creator of the Viola browser. The testimony professed that the Viola browser included Eolas' claimed plugin invention before their conception date (September 7, 1993). There is "substantial evidence that Viola was publicly known and used" before the plaintiffs' alleged conception date, it added. The ruling effectively ended a pending lawsuit against Yahoo, Google, Amazon and JC Penney.
On July 23, 2013, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has nationwide jurisdiction, affirmed a Texas federal court which had ruled in July 2012 that several claims relating to the two patents in the suit were invalid, a ruling which Eolas had appealed.
After the US Patent Office considered the evidence asserted at the 2012 trial, including Viola, it granted Eolas a new patent in November 2015 with claims which generally cover cloud computing on the Web. Eolas then filed a new lawsuit against Google, Amazon and Walmart. A 2022 Federal court ruling invalidated the cloud computing patent, saying the patent covered only abstract ideas. Eolas appealed the ruling, but the lower court's ruling was upheld. In October 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear a further challenge by Eolas to the lower court ruling.
From Wikipedia’s article on Eolas, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4
Timeline
- 1994Founded Founded1
Links
- Websitewww.eolas.com1
- WikipediaEolas
- WikidataQ1346299
Sources
The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.
- 1WikidataEolas on Wikidata
- 2WikipediaEolas on Wikipedia
- 3
- 4WikipediaEolas on Wikipedia (revision used)