![[Insert clever hyperlink here]](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/helloworld.jpg "Hello World")
Go ahead and rollover the image you see here. If a certain company gets its way, we’ll have to pay them some $80,000 for violating one of their patents. Clearly humanity has lost its way.
The deal is that a company by the name of Webvention Company claims ownership of patent no. 5,251,294. You can read the jargon of the patent filing if you want, but then again you could smash your foot with a cartoonishly large hammer. Either way.
The Webvention Company claims that the patent gives it exclusive rights to the technique of the image rollover with embedded hyperlinking. You know, when you hover your mouse over an image and that little bit of text appears.
Yeah, Webvention claims it owns that. Hmm.
It has targeted a Web site owned by Novartis, the big pharmaceutical company.
As the world turns, right? I think I’m going to patent the idea of writing boring posts all day. I’ll be a chamillionaire in no time at all.