We're talking about the web the year Mosaic was released. Before 1993 there were no web browsers that ran in Windows. There were no web search engines yet. There was little more than static hypertext webpages for research labs. There may well not have been other client-server applications yet...
Gopher and Archie and some remote identity/finger protocols already did most of the things the interactive web does today long before Mosaic showed up.
There have been many beautiful advances since then in usability, bandwidth, user base, and especially integration with outside services. None of those things constitute inventions in the sense of being technological, novel, and non-obvious.
Which doesn't stop absolutely everything from being patented, usually multiple times. That would require a competent patent office.
The number of patents the patent office receives has increased exponentially over the years and the patent office's resources have barely increased at all. They aren't even allowed to keep all of the patent filing fees they receive anymore, and Congress has dictated in its wisdom that they aren't allowed to let the backlog of unjudged patents grow. So don't blame the people at the patent office, blame our lawmakers.
A competent patent office would not be sufficient to evaluate software patents. The volume is just too great. Imagine trying to evaluate mechanical engineering patents if millions of people carried machine shops around in their backpacks.
No need to link to wikipedia articles on the web, I've been using it since you were probably still in elementary school.
RPC was around well before the web, as well as client-server programs. For the record, you don't need a Windows browser in order to invalidate the patent. If there are any X client-server apps that read instructions from a central server and displayed that information on its own client-side app, then my guess is that would invalidate the patent. I can think of at least one that originated in 1990 that could probably invalidate the patent.
This patent covers program objects embedded in HTML displayed in a browser. Client-server programs and X desktop apps would not be prior art for these claims. That's why they're suing Internet companies, not software companies.
Prior art would have to be something interactive that ran within a browser before the 1993 filing date. Lots of interactive network applications existed before then, but that's not what the patent claims to cover.
> I've been using it since you were probably still in elementary school.
This kind of quip does not add to the discussion or strengthen your argument. It just makes you sound arrogant and grumpy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_World_Wide_Web