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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.
Why do I suspect that if the current procedures at the USPTO had been in effect at the close of the 19th century things many things that we taken for granted today would never had become invented or improved? The courts would have been clogged with inventors suing each other over who invented the automobile, light bulb, etc. and demanding royalties rather than competing with one another to make better products.
Gotta love their attitude that Amazon's and others' patents were all wrong but ``our's is different''. (Please explain how patenting the obvious is wrong in their case but not yours. This sort of reminds me of most citizen's views that most ``politicians are worthless... except the one's I voted for''.) That, in particular, cracked me up until I remembered that remark about ``you wanna do ASP, you gotta go through us''. Is this the sort thing that the USPTO is supposed to be supporting?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Zope is run on the server, and that's where all the database stuff happens. Software, etc, isn't downloaded from the zserver to the client, just web pages (well, with java, or whatever.) Although. This could cover java. Java is compressed. Hmmm, interesting thought.
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If I have a lobotomy, can I still get a job as a patent examiner?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
As others have pointed out, the process that McAfee is patenting is rather descriptive (eg, requires that the user initiate the connection, requires a browser to initiate that, and requires authenication by the user), which pretty much limits the possible use of prior art to only a few questionable cases.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
MS: Hey, this patent covers our new business model, let's keep quiet, maybe McAfee won't notice.
McAfee: Hey, Microsoft is violating our patent, let's go after them.
McAfee: Hey, Microsoft, gives us lots of money or we'll take you to court and bend you over.
MS: No way man, file a suit against us, and we'll file one right back at you for violating patents (long list of overly broad patents owned by Microsoft).
McAfee: Ok, cool, want to "license" our patent, then you can help us track down poor schmucks who don't have money or patents to combat us with so we can suck them dry?
MS: Sounds good to us.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Actually, the patent doesn't require you to log on. The claims of a patent set out what it protects. The first claim doesn't have any requirements of logging on. The second claim (dependant on the first) provides that limitation. Thus, it covers systems that don't require people to log on.
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
McAfee has us by the balls here...
I bet there's Pseudonews in this somewhere, gimme a moment ;)
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
Even Starcraft had auto-patching, and the battle.net stuff for that was in beta in '97. Not the "preferred embodiment", but that doesn't limit patent scope. The other poster provided several web-based refutations. Obviously the courts will decide if there's enough prior art, but this is as much of a no-brainer as one click-- in that only people with no brains think it's a novel idea.
"Oh, shit! You make it automatically download and execute, rather than have them double-click on it? Genius! I've gotta write home about this! Oh, wait-- shiny thing...."
You want to see software as a service, through a web browser? Check these guys out. They've been doing what you just patented since around 1995, and I guarantee you they are MUCH better at it. Application hosting and services, through a web browser.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
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:
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Wasn't Microsoft going to release Windows XP under a 'Software as a service' license and requiring monthly (annual?) fees? But I'm sure Microsoft's legal teams will find a way around it, they alway do.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
I thought ipchains was a good thing?
:)
--Ty
"Software as a Service" means "Software execution controlled by someone else". Not something I want for my personal computers.
They just got the patent. They filed it three years ago.
Kevin Fox
Don't give up sex or breathing.
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No wait! I can't do that. Too much prior art!
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Now I am trying for electromagnetic waves moving information through the aether. Mortimer, the patent office guy, says he needs more than $100,000 this time, though. He has kids going to college. In case you need a source of income, the ingestion of products by the mouth is still available says Mort.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
And it's a real word, not a sniglet.
As I read the article I could think of piles of prior art. Even a search engine is offering 'software as a service' delivered through a web browser. E*trade has been offering it's stock broker software as a service for years through the web browser. It almost makes me suspect that there is more to this patent that comes across in the article. Unless they have managed to get something fundamental to offering 'web services' patented then this whole thing is worthless and will blow over like the whole One-click shopping patent.
People downloaded DOOM updates over the web before then, and Linux bug fixes, and lots of other stuff. How do you think people most people got their web browsers and security updates to it (many of them)? How do you think the NCSA web server was distributed? The first downloads happened over FTP (a web protocol) or a number of web-like protocols. Subsequent updates/downloads happened over the web. It took years for that kind of software to get distributed any other way.
I'm not necessarily defending the scope or righteousness of the patent system in general,
Oh, yes, you are; otherwise, you wouldn't make such random comments in response to a discussion about the problems with a specific comment. And like many people who do that sort of thing, you either don't have a clue about what has happened over the last 50 years in computer science or the computer industry, or you just conveniently choose to ignore it for demagogic reasons. Either way, your kind of response is as predictable as it is tiresome.
A system, method, and computer program product for delivery and automatic execution of
Don't know about you but this sure sounds like java applets to me and I could have sworn somebody already held the patent for that
From the patent:
PointCast.TM., however, is configured only to deliver content to the browser of a computer over the Internet. It is not designed or equipped with the means to download executable programs to a storage device connected to a computer and execute them at the remote computer.
In other words: PointCast does exactly what our thing does, only we instruct the machine (on the clientside) to run the bytes transferred, while PointCast only displayed them.
Definately an invention worthy of lucrative licencing fees! I guess this makes them Mc-A-Fee.
Oh, and:
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.
In other words: This is a blanket patent. Please remember that when we're in litigation with a zillion other companies to obtain royalties.
"Old man yells at systemd"
While McAfee.com was first to be awarded the patent, there are certainly competing (pending) patents trying to nab the same thing.
Note currently pending patent #20010010053, Service framework for a distributed object network system, comes frightfully close as well.
Of course they filed it this year, and it will probably be rejected as a result of McAfee's award.
How depressing.
--jordan
So, which antivirus am I supposed to use now? (for when I boot into Win2k, if you're curious)
McAfee is evil, so it seems, but Symantec is evil as well. Can anyone recommend an AV product from a morally-acceptable company?
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
So, you want to have your taxes raised to pay for anti-virus software for everyone?
Symantec has equally stupid patents. Why, wasn't it less than a year ago since Symantec was granted a patent on... virus definition updates. That puts Symantec right in line with McAffe and Amazon. Fortunately, Symantec management came to their sences and decided not to sue over it, realizing that the patent would be thrown out by the first judge who looked at it.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
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
Nah, they'll just license the patent if they need to. It's not like they can't afford it. Or maybe they'll just pressure McAfee into a free license. "Gee, maybe we should integrate a virus-scanner into our next version of Windows."
Ya gotta wonder what kind of sick masochist would base a business on writing Windows software. ;-)
Or any Java applet that does a "security, management, or optimization" function? Or a javascript file that does this? Wtf is an "automatically executing software package" .. that is so vague and could be anything from an HTML page ('execution' meaning 'render') to an .exe file. If it's an .exe file, then it doesn't "automatically execute" it is executed by the user.
I love how they use vague terms such as "automatically executing software package" and "markup language" in order to make sure they have all the bases covered, not just their stupid (probably buggy) solution that uses a specific type of software package and a specific type of markup language.
--
"In a preferred embodiment, the user directs the Internet browser to a Internet clinical services provider web site computer and logs in to the site using an identifier and a secure password and optionally makes a selection of the type of servicing desired, wherein an automatically-executing software package encapsulated within a markup language communication unit deliverable across the Internet is delivered, to the user computer, the automatically-executing software package being adapted to perform security, management, or optimization functions on the user computer."
Isn't that what Microsoft's Windows update does ? Or better said, isn't that what Microsoft's Windows update tries to do?
Are they going to pay up $$$ big or sue? If they sue how long will .NET be delayed.
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.
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I'd patent one (the Moral Compass), but I sure don't think I'd collect much royalties. Anyone out there know of prior art??
"Method and system for securing, managing or optimizing a personal computer"
So basically McAfee is claiming a patent on:
* Passwords
* Locks
* Command Shells
* GUIs
* Defragmenters
* Memory management
You get the idea...this is broader than the side of a barn. The only sentance I can pull out of the abstract that means anything is "you do something with a web browser and something happens on your computer"
Serious...who read this @#%!$ at the patent office and finds anything unique about it at all? I mean AT - FREAKING - ALL?
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
You could try these folks. By all reports they offer a very decent product and high quality services.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
There are at least two instances of prior art (that I submitted to Slashdot when I submitted mention of the McAfee story, but oh well...).
In 1997, Symantec partnered with Ziff Davis in launching the HealthyPC.com web site. It was a subscription service that allowed customers access to Norton Antivirus, a subset of Norton Utilities, and the then newly developed LiveUpdate product. I did web design for that launch.
The way the service worked is that the apps were downloaded and installed on the client side, but they could only be activated by a launch script from the server side, so a user had to log in to the HealthyPC.com subscriber area in order to use the tools.
Here are some pages that reference HealthyPC.com and pretty clearly show dates from 1997 (according to News.com, McAfee applied for the patent in 1998):
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-318512.html
http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1997/04/msg0024 1.htmlh tmt m
http://www8.zdnet.com/pcmag/insites/sod/sd970310.
http://www.quantum.org/members/issues/1097/7875.h
Before that, there was a site offering similar services that was called TuneUp.com, but it ended up going through a few acquisitions before finally ending up as part of Symantec.
You don't get superpowers until you have >50 karma.
By making it harder for application service providers (ASP) to operate, the price will go up. It will be more costly for a company to outsource its IT. Companies that outsource their IT layoff their IT staff.
The patent makes it less economical (or even uneconomical) to outsource IT, hence less layoffs, hence us IT people don't have to go around asking "Do you want fries with that?".
One ASP can serve many many companies. If ASPs became really prevalent a relative few overworked employees will be doing the work of many - some people will have murderous workloads, many will be unemployed. This patent ironically could prevent that.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
What? A patent that actually limits its scope?. But read right to the end for the gotcha:
Even for a USPTO filing, this is breathtaking. The detail wording of the patent discloses prior art that differs only in small details (at the time of filing) from the claimed method, and the attempt to generalise from a specific implementation to cover pretty much anything you download and install would be hilarious if it wasn't being done by a company with a legal department and a belligerent attitude.
I'm astonished to find that I can't wait for Microsoft to let their lawyers loose on this. I wonder how much longer the USPTO can be allowed to continue in it's current form? It's slipped quietely from being merely incompetent and underfunded into the realms of the farcical.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Definitely sounds like a challenge
Sounds more to me like "Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah!!" {strokes cat while adjusting monocle}
Nooo, Mr. Bond, I expect you to pay royalties!
The sting in the tail:
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Definitely sounds like a challenge
"The method of claim 6, said software package including a program to detect computer viruses on the remotely located computer"
So if it doesn't include a virus detector then it would appear to be okay.
Still seems a silly patent mind
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Not much of a challenge to me. McAfee is simply added to my list of evil corporations which I universally recommend to clients and friends that they stay far far away from and never do any business with whatsoever. I might have used McAfee products in the near future. That won't happen now. I don't have any of their stock, but if I did I would be selling it today.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.
I hate software patents and I think this is yet another silly one but it could provide an interesting way to stop Microsoft's .Net initiative. Isn't the .Net model completely based around the ASP model? So perhaps McAffee could simply refuse to license the patent to Micrsoft. By refusing to license, McAffee could at the very least keep Microsoft tied up in court for a long time.
This isn't to say that McAffee has any vested interest in kicking Microsoft around. In fact Microsoft would probably do their best to destroy McAffee through other means if this happened. But it's an interesting idea.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Actually, kerubi gets a cookie just by browsing Slashdot.
(Sorry, I just couldn't resist.)
Developers: We can use your help.
Microsoft don't have their own virusscanner anyhow, so perhaps we can expect Microsoft Viruscan pretty soon ;-)
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
[Zappa]
Those applying for patents would benefit because they would not be granted patents which would eventually be ruled unlawful in court. They would then be able to apply for more narrowly drawn patents which do not infringe on prior art.
Owners of prior art would benefit because they would not have to spend time and money on court battles in order to establish facts which should have been established at the patent application level in the first place.
Consumers would benefit because they would not have to bear the increased cost of products and services due to patent lawsuits.
Slashdotters would benefit because we could spend our time contesting patent applications instead of ranting about bogus patents after the fact.
Let's just say I REALLY doubt McAfee was the only one doing this in 1998
And I can prove it. From the patent:
From this ZDNet article: The prior art known as "Windows Update" blows McAfee's patent out of the water by nearly six months.Will I retire or break 10K?
hrm, one of the first things that came to mind was the RBL (Realtime Blackhole List), which (IIRC) can update firewall rules or sendmail rules.. (nope, cant look it up, but if someone knows more or better, be my guest)
Frankly, I can't be bothered to at the moment.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
It won't set precedent for software parents in general being illegit, only that particular one.
MS is gonna get their .NET squashed?
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
... 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.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Don't be fooled by mentions of Internet browsers; it's clear that these guys want their patent to be interpreted broadly enough to cover any client application that speaks HTTP or FTP. Once you realize that, it's clear that apt-get does everything described in claims 11 and 12, and since standard Internet protocols are used, claim 1 as well. And apt-get predates the filing date of this patent (December 8, 1998), and other features of the Debian package system provide all of the capabilities described in this patent, other than those for collecting money.
It's possible that some portion of this patent could survive, but an easy way for competitors to work around this patent is to base their mechanisms for delivering virus updates on apt technology, delivering their updates in nice, standard .deb or .rpm packages.
The patent abstract only seems to imply that this will cover remote recovery/maintence of PC's.
..which, Hard Drive recovery agencies have been doing for a while, I'd imagine.
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
From the Patent:
Abstract
A system, method, and computer program product for delivery and automatic execution of security, management, or optimization software over an Internet connection to a user computer responsive to a user request entered via a web browser on the user computer. In a preferred embodiment, the user directs the Internet browser to a Internet clinical services provider web site computer and logs in to the site using an identifier and a secure password and optionally makes a selection of the type of servicing desired, wherein an automatically-executing software package encapsulated within a markup language communication unit deliverable across the Internet is delivered, to the user computer, the automatically-executing software package being adapted to perform security, management, or optimization functions on the user computer. User identifiers and passwords enabling the downloads may be provided on a per-download basis or on a subscription basis.
Soccer Goal Plans
One of these days, someone is going to make a claim on one of these absurd, vague, obvious, and incredibly arrogant patents that will be the last straw, and the sheeple in congress will be moved to reduce the patent office's power. Here's hoping it's today.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Hi guys,
Perhaps the best way to protest their action would be to purchase as many Norton & Symantec products as possible.
Regards,
Ben Hallert
Symantec
Solarsoft has been in use since before 1995.
In the usual american corporate structure, no one above the lowest level of engineering management is ever going to get time to invent anything. Directors and VP's certainly can never get out of meetings long enough to do any engineering, if the titles actually indicate a high position in the company rather than being 2nd and 3rd tier in a tiny 3 or 4 tier organization. 8-) So do those two "directors" have nothing to direct but themselves, or is putting their boss's name on the patent possibly fraudulent?
The patent specification is not directed to toast, and indeed expressly distinguished making toast by convention means. It is directed to a process for refreshing stale rolls to become palatable by the use of an intense amount of heat over a short time.
The prosecution history likewise reflects this limitation.
Surprise, surprise yeat another patent on something obvious that tons of people are doing
It doesn't matter how many tons of people are doing something -- if they weren't doing it more than one year prior to the date of the application, it does not negate patentability. 35 U.S.C. s. 102(b).
It doesn't matter whether you consider the invention to be obvious. The test is whether there exists prior art that contains each and every element of the claim. If no one piece of prior art contains the element, then prior art references may be combined to "fill in" for the missing pieces, provided that the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art.
In short, "obviousness," as the term is used to determine patentability, doesn't mean what you appear to think it means.
The CGI program running on the server computer 100 causes a web page to be downloaded to the user computer 104. Embedded in the web page are ActiveX.TM. controls and scripts that cause a search program to be executed on the user computer 104 to determine if any executable software needs execution, installation, upgrades or updates (step 408). In a preferred embodiment, this results in a search of the user computer's storage medium, for example, in the cache area of the browser 116, to determine if any program needs to be downloaded. Additionally, the program looks to determine if there is a need to execute any software program, such as an anti-virus program (step 410).
So basically the're patenting using ActiveX to do Virus detection through a web browser. I would think MS might not like them claiming such an ActiveX function as theirs.