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RDF: web standard threatened by basic patent

In 1997, with priority date 1994, an obscure canadian software company received a european patent on a basic information processing method, namely the idea of describing information by hierarchies of binary relations. In 1999 a communication protocol called Ressource Description Framework (RDF) was adopted as a web standard. In 2001, when some software applications gradually became available, a license collecting company started enforcing the patent, as a first step threatening 50 companies with infringement litigation.

binary oriented set sequencing: An EPO patent, granted in 1997 with priority date 1994, on a method of information organisation commonly used in a recent world wide web standard. According to this method, all information is structured into atom identifiers and statements of relationsship between two identifiers. This allows a greater independence between data and methods of processing these data.
Heise: Späte Abrechnung: Softwarepatent über RDF: One of the first articles on the subject
Resource Description Framework: Specification of an XML based Protocol for describing Web Contents. A result of collaborative work of several companies, propagated by the W3C as a standard since 1999.
Pearl Ltd: A license enforcement agency which the patentee entrusted to maximise revenues from the patent. Pearl kept silence for several years and then sent an extortion letter to 50 companies after the patented method had been incoroporated into a standard.
O'Reilly: one of the victims
UDTL.com hiding behind Pearl: The UDTL webserver is no longer found