For those that aren’t yet aware, Freedom Scientific has filed suit against GW Micro for of all things, patent infringement. Apparently, Freedom Scientific has issues with the implementation of a feature contained in GW Micro’s recent beta of their Window Eyes screen reading product. So, what is this major issue? In it’s latest beta, GW Micro introduced a placemarker feature, something that has existed in Freedom Scientific’s Jaws screen reader for a while now. Basically, this feature allows the user to keep track of a place while reading a web page. Great if you’re reading a news article and need to go away from it for whatever reason. Or, if you frequently visit a page containing a bunch of navigational content above the main area — by setting a place marker, a user could quickly jump to the content area of interest VS needing to wade through the navigational stuff each time the page is visited.

Certainly, I’m not a patent attorney and haven’t seen the specifics of Freedom Scientific’s filing, but this all doesn’t seem like a thing worth suing over. After all, there are many features the two products share, links lists and access to the system tray just to name a few, and we’ve not seen lawsuits claiming patent infringement from either side.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time Freedom Scientific has filed suit against another assistive technology company for, what to me are silly reasons. In May of 2007, Freedom Scientific sued Serotek Corp. over the use of the word “freedom” in the name of one of their flagship products. Serotek had developed a voice-enabled web portal known as the “Freedom Box.” Using the Freedom Box, blind users and those with motor difficulties could easily gain access to Email and a wide variety of Internet-based content, all via a uniformed interface. For many, the Freedom Box solved challenges posed by needing to learn a web browser, a separate Email client, separate audio players, etc… Freedom Scientific, however, felt that users would confuse the term “Freedom Box” with their own corporate name and hence filed suit. The Freedom Box eventually became the very successful System Access Mobile Network which continues to provide access to information to those that otherwise might not have it.

GW Micro’s blog has a great post concerning this recent lawsuit and I’d encourage everyone to check it out. Like many others, I am appalled at Freedom Scientific’s filing and feel it’s only purpose is to delay the release of GW Micro’s latest version 7 of Window Eyes. Certainly, I respect the fact that Freedom Scientific has the right to protect it’s intellectual property rights, however, being able to mark ones place while reading a web page seems to me to be more of a conceptual thing.

I’ll definitely post any developments resulting from this unfortunate suit and would encourage anyone with comments to post as well.

Steve