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McAfee Patents ASP Business Model

Posted by michael on from the your-patent-will-come-to-$4.65,-please-drive-through dept.

Rob Kischuk writes: "According to an article at InfoWorld, McAfee.com has been granted a patent on its variety of "software as a service". No specifics on the patent, but the CEO's statement, "You either work with us, or you work around this patent", seems to indicate that more than a couple of ASPs could be affected." kerubi gets a cookie for sending in a link to the patent in question, or read McAfee's press release.

3 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Take a look at the title... by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Informative
    • "Method and system for securing, managing or optimizing a personal computer"

    I wonder how many times I'm going to have to post the simple advice to read to the end, to see that it gets even worse:

    • Those skilled in the art may make numerous modifications and departures from the specific embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the claimed invention. For example [...]the software downloaded may be intended to perform tasks such as database management, word processing, spread sheet, games, or other tasks that are not specified herein.
    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  2. Surprise by technomancerX · · Score: 4, Informative

    Surprise, surprise yeat another patent on something obvious that tons of people are doing... Although considering they filed in 1998 it may not be that hard o find prior art on this one. Arguably any form of web-based installer violates this patent (or counts as prior art) as software installation can be considered 'administration'.

    --
    .technomancer
  3. Another bounty comming right up. by thebitninja · · Score: 4, Informative
    If Macafee have just filed this patent then there must be prior art out there.

    Here is an excellent article on IP issues and mad patents.

    Also check out IP.com and BountyQuest

    so I imagine well be seeing something here about this soon!

    I'm tempted to immediately blame the companies for doing this, but I guess they are just trying to work within the system to make money. It's the system that sucks. Still I'm gonna hold off buying that antivirus software for a while now.