BT, the UK’s favourite telecoms monopoly,  is claiming ownership of hyperlinks. Yes, you heard us right. They reckon they patented the good ol’ HREF back in the day… uh, hello? Anyone home? British Telecom says it came up with idea for hyperlinks that turn separate pages of information into an interconnected whole in a patent filed in the US in 1976 and granted in 1989. Last week its lawyers contacted the top Internet service providers in the United States, saying it was time talk turkey about paying for the the technology referred to in BT’s patent as ‘an information handling system in which information is derived from a computer at a remote point and transmitted via the public telephone network to terminal apparatus.’ Which, BT’s lawyers explain, means ‘hyperlink.’ We have a strong feeling that they won’t be paying, but if the claim is successful, BT reckons it could make millions from the licence agreements. Industy sources warn that it’s not worth BT’s while to pursue the claim, and that the commercial damage and unpopularity which the company would bring on its head if it tried to enforce this patent would be incalculable. BT obviously disagrees. ‘What we expect is that ISPs will do the decent thing and take licenses for our intellectual property that they’re using,’ said Simon Craven, a spokesman for the company. ‘We’re looking for reasonable royalties on revenues that they’re enjoying from our technology.’‘Go ahead,’ reply some commentators in the US. ‘Sue us - then we’ll launch a class action suit against BT for every broken link we’ve ever had to deal with using product liability as the basis.’ BT insiders say that it is the internal culture of the company which promotes such ridiculous activities. There is no controlling strategy in the company, they say, and departments compete to make the most out of patents they have held for years. As every fule kno, hyperlink technology existed in the 1960s, long before BT filed for its patent in 1980. This ‘prior art’ would legally, in any sensible court of law, invalidate BT’s patent. But BT summarily rejects the claims. ‘Basically, we are the prior art on this,’ says Craven - and with a straight face. BT developed the technology itself in the 1970s, applied for it in 1980, and received it in 1989, he reckons. A BT spokesman said that the company has spent the time in between then and now preparing its licensing programme for companies that want to use hyperlinks. ‘It takes a long time to prepare a licensing programme of this magnitude,’ said the spokesman. BT apparently realised the potential of its Hidden Page patent during a trawl of its 15,000 patent. What it calls the ‘growing popularity of the internet’ has now spurred it to capitalise on the patent. ‘It is only now that the world wide web has become commercially significant,’ said the spokesman. What, so mean the last two years haven’t meant anything to you? Tim Berners-Lee, who was not available for comment at the time of this report, is the person usually credited with inventing the global hypertext system that became the world wide web. In creating the WWW he drew on the work of computing pioneer Ted Nelson - widely regarded as the father of hypertext - and his Xanadu system. Xanadu, in turn, gave props to Vannevar Bush and his ‘memex’ system, as proposed in the 1945 paper ‘As We May Think’. BT wasn’t even around then, and (at least as far as we know) the telco doesn’t feature heavily in any histories of the Internet written to date. Perhaps it should invest in a historical revisionist to take a look at that…