He says it wasn't easy because the PTO understands the potential significance of his IP and went out of its way looking for prior art but came up dry and awarded Charlie his claims.

Actually they're continuations of a patent that dates back to late 1994, which is what makes Charlie dangerous.

More dangerous, in fact, than Eolas Technologies and its sole employee Michael Doyle, who claims to own the patent on plug-ins and has managed so far to clip Microsoft for $521 million in court-awarded damages and spook the W3C to the point that it's got the creator of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee himself, petitioning the PTO to squelch the Eolas patent out of fear of what will happen to the Web if it isn't.

Charlie's patents are way broader than the Eolas patent and in fact may trump the Eolas patent. If those plug-ins Eolas is talking about are dynamically configured, then Charlie's got dibs according to his new patent number 6,671,713, "Execution of a dynamically configured application service in access method-independent exchange."

Between ‘713 and the other new patent, number 6,671,746, "Execution of application process using registry having binding methods," Charlie makes some 238 carefully worded, eyeball-glazing claims.

Bottom line, these two new honeys should put anyone's teeth on edge who, say, provides subscription services or uses JavaScript, Java or ActiveX.

Or, for that matter, has Web services that use XML and UDDI -and what self-respecting web service doesn't. Or people using cookies in supplying a paid service. Let's see that takes in gaming, gambling and porn.

Then there're all those online stock transactions. Hmmm. And of course VOIP and Wi-Fi.

How about any scheme that uses a propriety protocol to provide a service.

Or eBay's practice of charging people to sell something.

And Microsoft's browser IE 6 when it uses keynames to redirect searches.

And of course all of AOL.

Get the picture?

Lucky for some people, Charlie is self-funded and doesn't have a sugar daddy like Eolas to pay his legal bills. He also wanted to have these continuations in his pocket before he made any moves. He says, however, that he has hired two - not one, but two - law firms that he declines to name to research the case of spammers and their sponsors possibly infringing and you just know he could attract one of those big-time litigators like the SCO Group got David Boies to take his case on contingency.

Charlie has also tied up with Equinom Corporation, the P2P start-up that fingered client/server as the hidden culprit behind the dot.com bust (CSN No 472). After meeting Charlie and his fellow coder Frank Angel last year, Equinom scrapped its existing development effort and reincorporated to include Charlie and Angel on the founding team of a new company with much bigger ambitions. Its new mission statement is to "enable an Internet that actually works."

Equinom now has an exclusive license to Charlie's PDCX protocol -in other words, Charlie's technology, not his IP -which it's renamed PeerEdge. PeerEdge is a networking platform that melds the concepts of P2P, grid computing and web services into a single broadband network services environment for SMS, VOIP, transactional web services and systems and applications integration.

Equinom claims that in a lot of situations this PeerEdge stuff can eliminate server software and middleware not to mention those expensive VPN leases.

The way PeerEdge works, small software "namespace switches" are distributed across the network and configured through XML documents to enable services discovery and authentication between end-points on the network. Then other switches called EPOP (for End Point of Presence) switches located on end-user PCs enable XML-based connection, communications and service exchanges between those end-points.

PeerEdge seems to blur the line between open and proprietary networking software. The Equinom PeerEdge switching software is proprietary, patented and only available on a subscription, not a licensing basis. But the switch will only do what the PDCX protocol statements in the subscriber's XML tell it to do.

Equinom CEO Tim Negris points out that "The intellectual property in PDCX-based services remains firmly under the control of the XML creators, who can either publish their property on the network or not as they see fit," adding with a modest shrug, "The switches are just a distributed execution environment for that XML."

Although Equinom won't say for sure, it's understood to have some pretty sexy potential customers on the line. All it would say was that it's "in various stages of discussion and development with leading concerns in financial markets, broadband networks and government agencies."

It said it expects to announce "some noteworthy design-wins by spring break," which we take to mean it expects to have customers and/or partners by around Easter.

Equinom has been self-funded so far, but according to John Burns, the finance guy on the founding team, it's "interviewing VCs and other investors to find those who will know how to ride a wave as big as we think this one is."

Equinom claims that the PeerEdge network and the PDCX protocol can enable network upstarts with a "just a little bit of money" to challenge established leaders by offering equal or better services at a fraction of the IT costs.

"Consumer services like classifieds, auctions and Internet dating, and business services like secure e-mail and audited message-based trading are examples of applications that are perfect for switched P2P technology. We call them edge apps," Negris said.

"These are the services where the action is between the end-points and middleware like database and web server software add little value. With PeerEdge, the content stays with the owner. It doesn't get stashed on some server somewhere. Your dating profile or your securities analysis stays on your computer and the network ensures that it is only seen by those you want to see it.

"And, the service provider doesn't need a giant data center full of pictures and text to compete with eBay or Match.com," Negris said. "They just need to know where to find the pictures and text and direct customers to it. They can charge for the services, participate in the transactions or do whatever their business model tells them to do, but they just have to manage the directory and connection information, which is a good use for blades, by the way."

Guess we don't have to point out that if Equinom hits it big, Charlie will have all the cash he needs to pursue his IP claims.

• Uh-Oh. Hold on to Your Wallet. Charlie's Back with More Proof that He Owns the Patent on Web Services