McAfee Patents ASP Business Model

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.

Comments

Re:My god - Microsoft will be the *good guys*!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it is a good move by McAfee. They simply license their "technology" to Microsoft for a nominal fee of, say, $.001/unit and MS cannot afford to litigate the issue as a business decision. Then McAfee gets to say "See, our patent is so strong even MicroSoft will not challenge it. Pay up all the rest of you."

Microsoft?

[alen]

Are they going to pay up $$$ big or sue? If they sue how long will .NET be delayed.

windowsupdate.microsoft.com

[wiredog]

one or more maintenance tasks comprise at least one of the following: compression of software, compression of data, search for software that needs to be upgraded, search for data that needs to be upgraded, upgrade of software, upgrade of data, search for obsolete software, search for obsolete data, deletion of obsolete software, deletion of obsolete data, archival of software, archival of data, hardware diagnostics, and software diagnostics.

Windowsupdate.microsoft.com is probably covered by this patent. So are the auto update services used by Red Hat and SuSe. And any other remote update system. Hell, it might cover PC Anywhere. If it does, then it might be partially invalidated on prior art grounds.

But, it looks like portal systems like Zope would be in the clear. Damn broad patent, though.

Naaah... Microsoft won't lobby against patents...

[morzel]

... they'll just buy McAfee (and their patent) if necesarry.

Microsoft don't have their own virusscanner anyhow, so perhaps we can expect Microsoft Viruscan pretty soon ;-)

Re:Surprise

[Phrogz]

Arguably any form of web-based installer violates this patent

Yup...but can you point to a web-based installer prior to 1998? People are all gung-ho on patent-bashing, but I think this is a combination of I-want-free-stuff ("free napster!") and hindsight-is-20/20.

I'm not necessarily defending the scope or righteousness of the patent system in general, but just because everyone is doing it today, and just because you use it frequently, doesn't mean it didn't take someone else's smarts to come up with the idea and introduce it to society. Zippers, shoelace grommets, post-its, etc.

"Can you believe it, someone has just patented STICKING PAPER TO THINGS!"

Patent idiocy will die when...

[alispguru]

... the first lawyer successfully patents a legal argument, or perhaps a clever sequence of filing inter-related lawsuits, as a business process, and then starts charging other lawyers for using it.

Remember, the legal system in general thrives on adding complexity to other people's lives. When the complexity starts removing money from their pockets, things will change.

Re:Take a look at the title...

[rhysweatherley]

Only the claim carry legal weight. The rest of the text is explainatory information supplied as comments to help the patent clerk and the public understand the patent.

The claims make no mention of databases, word processing, etc. Patent owners want you to believe that everything in the application has legal force. Only the claims do.

Read the claims: it covers applying automatic virus scanner and security updates on a user's computer. Everything else is McAfee's wishful thinking.

Someone else mentioned Symantec's HealthyPC, which existed 1 year prior to the filing date. This patent should have been dead on arrival at the USPTO. It's yet another example of why the patent system must be reformed ASAP.