Eolas Technologies, whose overarching browser patent claims struck fear in the heart of World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee and left Microsoft, a test case for the industry, significantly poorer, filed a massive patent infringement suit in the infamous Eastern District of Texas this morning against 23 companies, almost all of them brand names.

It's Berners-Lee's nightmare of the Internet being brought to its knees come true.

They're going to have to rent a hall just to fit all the lawyers.

The defendants include Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Sun, Google subsidiary YouTube, eBay, Texas Instruments, soon-to-be Dell subsidiary Perot Systems, Go Daddy, Staples, Office Depot, Blockbuster, Citigroup, Pepsi subsidiary Frito-Lay, JC Penny, JP Morgan Chase, New Frontier Media, Playboy Enterprises International, Rent-a-Center, Argosy Publishing and CDW.

Eolas is charging them with willfully infringing the so-called ‘906 patent that undid Microsoft, the one Berners-Lee personally asked the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to invalid as a "major impediment to the operation of the web," plus a brand new ‘906 continuation patent designated 7,599,985 (‘985).

The ‘906 patent, which has been through two separate PTO re-examinations, the last one ending this past February, claims to have enabled browsers to act as platforms for interactive embedded applications, widgetry used by a billion web users worldwide.

The ‘906 patent was issued in 1998. The second ‘985 patent was just issued today, the day the suit was filed, and is supposed to let web sites add interactive embedded applications by way of plug-ins and AJAX.

Eolas charges each of the 23 defendants with infringing these patents "by making, using, selling, offering to sell, and/or importing in or into the United States, without authority: (i) web pages and content to be interactively presented in browsers...(ii)...software that allows that content to be interactively presented in and/or served to browsers...and/or (iii)... computer equipment that stores, serves, and/or runs any of the forgoing."

The suit specifically faults Abode's Flash and Shockwave; Apple's QuickTime, Safari for Windows, Safari for the Mac and Apple desktop and laptop computers; Google's Chrome for Windows and Chrome for the Mac; and Sun's Java and JavaFX.

It wants an injunction and treble damages, a potentially gargantuan sum. Heck, it even wants lawyers' fees and supplemental damages for any continuing post-verdict infringement up until entry of the final judgment. It say the companies all knew about the ‘906 patent and did not cease infringing or inducing infringement.

If successful, the case would then serve as a way to tax other companies not named in the suit.

In 2004 Microsoft was nailed for $565 million for infringing the ‘906 patent. The PTO re-examined the patent and rejected it, then re-examined it again and upheld it. A federal appeals court left the infringement and damages in place but ordered part of the case reheard. Microsoft went to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case, and Eolas and Microsoft finally settled out of court on undisclosed terms in the summer of 2007.

Eolas happens to be based in the shadow of the Tyler, Texas courthouse, a venue known for siding with the plaintiff, so getting the case moved out of there in going to be nigh on to impossible.

Its lawyer is McKool Smith.