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The US Patent Office is currently re-examining the patent, which is held by Eolas.

Microsoft issued a brief statement saying, 'The action by the Patent Office may result in the cancellation of the Eolas patent.

'Given these circumstances, and after consulting industry colleagues and developers, Microsoft, for now, will not be releasing

The patent was granted to Eolas in 1998 and covers the embedding of small interactive programs, such as plug-ins, applets, scriptlets or ActiveX Controls, into Web pages and the building the technology into Web browsers.

In August last year Eolas won a $500mn court settlement from Microsoft, which the software behemoth unsuccessfully appealed. Since then the Internet's founder, Tim Berners-Lee, has claimed that the patent is invalid and the US Patent Office has begun re-examining it.

If the patent is upheld and Microsoft loses its appeal, it will affect not just Internet Explorer, but all other Web browser and will require that Web pages which use multimedia content will in all likelihood have to be re-coded.

Microsoft has held talks with other major Internet players, such as Apple and Real Networks, in order to harmonise any changes, should they be necessary.