Stop the Balthaser Patent - 180

Published March 15, 2006

As a concerned citizen I am writing in response to the patent issued to Balthaser Online (7,000,180) by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. I am DEEPLY disturbed by this all-inclusive patent that would stifle innovation and render many of the most useful websites on the Internet inoperable.

Here are just SOME of the reasons for the reversal:

1. The patent is much too broad, because my view of what a rich-media application is could be vastly different from Balthaser Online.

2. Many of my applications could be considered rich-media, as well as millions of others.

3. The cost of changing applications to not use rich-media would be devastating to the web development community.

4. The economy now depends on large commercial and consumer websites (Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, Wal-Mart, etc.) and forcing them to change or pay out royalties would collapse an already fragile economy.

5. The technologies used in creating rich-media applications DID NOT ORIGINATE WITH BALTHASER! They didn't even create the software used to run their own website or the websites of their clients!

I urge whomever is responsible to quickly reverse this patent.

Thank you,

Sean Gates

By Sean Gates

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