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AvantGo Gets a Patent
AnElder writes: "Yahoo's Daily News Technology section is carrying a story reporting that AvantGo has received a patent for its synchronization technology. And here's an excerpt: "In legal jargon, AvantGo said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had issued it patent No. 6,341,316 covering the system, method and computer program product for synchronizing content between a server
and a client." Why didn't I think of this?" In all fairness, the patent doesn't seem to be as bad as many that have been issued. It cites many other patents as references (which helps ensure that AvantGo is doing something *different*), and is rather specific about the process - I would expect that there are many ways to "synchronize" data that wouldn't run into this patent.
Link to the patent is here.
that they don't leverage this to try to quash their competition, the most excellent Plucker
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
[Obligatory Common Tool/Application Reference]
[Obligatory Comment Such As, "I bet the US Patent Office could give me a patent for my ass."]
I think that covers it...
--Chag
The patent actually reads: What is claimed is: 1. A method of synchronizing a server and a client on behalf of a user, comprising the steps of:... - from the patent database
Well, I guess the patent isn't too onerous. But! What's the big deal anyhow?
Look at it - software patents basically take the idea that you had and force the concept into a legally protected form. But I believe the reality is that duplicating the data streams and storage methodologies (not to mention the marketing and hype) are going to be cost prohibitive for most companies anyhow. Why bother?
I suppose this kind of things bothers me, as I know it does others, because it seems to be getting more prevalent and smacks to me of protectionism in software. To me it's equivalent to providing an incumbant telecommunications infrastructure provider (like a cable-co or telco) exclusivity in a market and keeping out the competition. Good for the provider, bad for competition and business generally. I firmly believe that preventing the use of good technology in any scientific field (like software, biotech, engineering) by many different groups slows the rate of innovation in that field. Patents on specific inventions seem reasonable to me, though. I approve of the patent for the lightbulb, but not a patent on the use of electricity to provide light!
Isn't this fairly similar to Windows, and Romain Profiles? Microsoft ought to have a field day with this one.
Claim 1 basically recites a method for updating content for a client at the request of a user, with the update coming from the content provider based on a user profile stored at the server. This is my take on a quick read of the claim without looking at the detailed description, but it seems rather broad.
I'm completely against silly software patents, like the 1-click one, but I think that AvantGo deserves this one.
:)
If you've ever used AvantGo, you know that it's an incredible system. They deserve this patent! Clearly, they worked hard on their idea, it wasn't stolen from someone else or obvious.
This patent only covers server->handheld synchronization, not server->client sync (it's not overly broad). It won't make the whole Internet infringing.
This isn't a patent on a simple algorithm or something really simple, it's a patent on a complicated method (as opposed to most software patents). It obviously took a lot of work to perfect this idea, and the way our current IP system works, we let the inventors keep the right to their inventions. Whether or not you agree with our IP system, it's the way it works over here, and they deserve the patent.
qslack.com
This patent looks to be worded broadly enough to cover Lotus Notes clientserver replication, which was developed around 1985. The only difference I can see is that Notes replication does not use XML or HTTP... obviously these were not available in 1985. I don't know if that's a material part of the patent claim.
I think Lotus has their own patents covering replication. I also know that some work was being done to leverage the Notes replication engine in the Internet world, (circa 1995) perhaps using HTTP or XML, but I can't prove this.
IBM, owner of Lotus and the world's largest patent holder, may have something to say about this patent.
Yeah, lots of references were cited, but the application also pended for less than 2 years. It's not uncommon for a software application to wait longer than that just to get a first action from the PTO. It looks like Sterne, Kessler really buried them in prior art right off the bat and pushed this one through; I'll bet the legal fees for this one were huge. As broad as the claims are, I wouldn't be surprised if there's a related submarime application still pending.
United States Patent
Chagatai, et al.
6,557,786
Abstract
Described herein are systems, methods, and organs for excreting fecal matter from the human body.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Well, if you don't have to tell a third party to use Plucker, it looks from a reading of the patent that it wouldn't even be infringing. Having state stored by a provider seems to be a key part of the patent.
There is another program out there for syncing content to PDAs - Mazingo. It's focused on Pocket PCs for now.
It supports rich media, meaning you can get video, sound, or any other file type when you synchronize. It also has a lot of the same types of channels as AvantGo, though they're admittedly fewer in number. Good quality, though, which is something that can sometimes be hard to find anymore on AvantGo.
Jenova_Six
Well you could patent extortion, a method for forcing the surrender for funds despite the protests of other interested parties.
To make it technical, add in a computer terminal someplace.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Ha! I'm going to patent joke templates. The first example will be the patent joke template joke template.
-- SIGFPE
While I was in college I did a co-op with a company that makes software to sync a certain popular PDA with Office. At the time, the company was really small and there were established competitors who were a lot larger than my employer. They, too, had a patent on a particular algorithm of synchronization, but we my bosses (one of whom was the developer of our software) weren't concerned. Our software was so much faster than theirs, the algorithm couldn't possibly be the same.
Imagine our surpise when our biggest competitor sent a "cease-and-desist" letter claiming we infringed on their patents. My bosses denied it, of course, but our competitor would have none of it. They had to see our code for themselves to verify that we weren't in violation of their patents. I don't quite remember exactly how it was resolved - I left soon after this became a big issue - but I'm sure it had something to do with my employer striking a deal with the manufacturer of the PDA.
Anyway, where I'm going with this is that, sure it might not seem like having this patent is a bad thing or over-reaching. And, used responsibly, it's probably not. But don't be surprised to see AvantGo try to get the drop on a potential competitor if they can use this patent as leverage.
My sigs always suck.
Claim 1: The client subscribes to aa set of content, the server gathers this content and later sends instructions to the client to transfer the content.
Claim 2: As above, but use a single message for the request and a single message for the transfer.
Claim 3: As 1, but also identifies "information that is of interest" during the sync.
Claim 4: Claim 1 where it happens over http. victim: I may become ill and stop typing this.
Claim 5: Claim 4 but transfer some XML on the HTTP. Yep, that's it. I can't go on. I mean no one would ever have considered transfering XML over HTTP! My GOD these people are geniuses!
There is nothing in this patent that a handful of competent engineers wouldn't come up with in their first brainstorming session.
I propose that the US Patent Office has so badly mismanged software patents that ALL software patents should be vacated and the patent examiners held personally liable for any damages claimed by the affected patent holders.
I couldn't make heads nor tails of the damned thing-- no wonder the USPTO is so backlogged, the legalese has really reached ridiculous heights. Is babelfish ever going to release Lawyer to English? I'm not sure what's more unreadable-- legalese or babelfish translations.
However, I know Marimba was doing its Castanet updater before this was filed, so this application will have to be fairly specific to not get clobbered by that.
I should add that it took eight people to invent this and most of their references are their own press releases.
Zarni Maung should be ashamed of himself.
I wonder if we can query the patent database by primary examiner? God knows what else this guy is letting by.
It's an impressive system, but to me it fails to me to qualify as unobvious. Given the problem that AvantGo solves, it seems to me to be a straightforward and obvious solution: it's just that they happened to be the first to stumble upon the problem.
Researched and non-insindeary commentary from michael??
Whats going on?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Actually I don't think it's that complicated, but it is clever. What they've done is turn the orgy of do you have the latest version of this, no, here it is, ask for the next one into this:
It looks like the client sends a doc to the server that looks like
<sync>
<item id='identifier>fancy_hash</item>*
</sync>
and gets back
<update>
<new_item id='identifier> content </new_item>
</update>
The clever part is the fact that only have 1 round trip to sync your device, important for high latency environments (read internet), and the synchronization request is simple enough to generate on an anemic palm
Yes, you can search the PTO by primary examiner.
:-)
Maung also granted a patent on Melodic alerts for communications device.
Not as broad as it sounds, but they have managed to patent their protocol for sending a snippet of song as numeric digits. I suppose the business model here is to get companies to adopt this specific tune encoding and then be able to collect royalties.
I could certainly encode a melody more compactly without infringing this patent, so innovation can't be the driving force behind this one.
My personal favorite of Maung's Greatest Hits is Internet weight reduction system. It involves dieting by sending pictures of yourself to a computer to analyze your outline to verify the information you enter into the computer run diet plan.
Regardless of whether or not this patent is "silly," it is clear that future ones will be - for one simple reason:
The goal of the patent office is to "assist patent seekers in obtaining patents as quickly as possible."
The point is, there goal is to help give out as many patents as they legals can; they don't consider their job to be weighing the merit of a patent so long as it conforms to broad legal standards.
I just developed a new calculator that performs additions using a novel method. X+Y is calculated as X-(-Y). It never uses the add function!!! Warning to you thieving bastards: patent is pending.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
As some of you may know, the claims that do not refer to other claims are the important ones in determining whether or not a product infringes the patent. The independent claims of this patent are terse, and use very ambiguous terms. This means that it is very broad, and so very likely to be infringed. Fortunately, the earliest filing date that they might claim for this patent is in '99, and their is plenty of prior art available to get (at least the first claim) ruled invalid. That first claim is ridiculously broad, in fact. That type of process has been around since networks were invented in the 70s, right?
I don't know much about the patent, legalese is beyond me so I'm not going to comment on if the patent is overly broad or not. With this type of thing, it's hard to say. Some could argue that what AvantGo is doing isn't a whole lot different than how a browser works.
Here's the thing though, even if it is very similar to a browser, it's still a unique and worthwhile service. Basically it takes existing sites and digests them into a format my PocketPC/Palm Pilot can handle. I like this because it turns my PocketPC into a little entertainment device. The Onion is one of many sites that is support AvantGo. It's pretty cool that in a meeting I can flip open my PocketPC to 'check my calender', only to be reading an article about an Ancient Race of Skeleton People Unearthed in Egypt.
It's likely that the patent could be too similar to how a browser works I suppose. Here's the thing though, AvantGo has a pretty focused business. "Convert web pages into useful docs on a PocketPC." I'd say that the chances are real good that the only people they'd go after would be the 'me too!' places that take AvantGo's idea and run off with it to make a competing service. Since AvantGo did such a wonderful job of making this a useful service, I'd hate to deny them protection. I don't think this is on the same level as Amazon patenting 'one-click shopping.' The steps AvantGo has to go through are rather complex.
I tell you what though, my tone would change really fast if they unfairly sued somebody.
"Derp de derp."
That's the oldest trick in the book. Remember x86 asm optimizations?
sub reg,128 => add reg,-128
I found that one on Ken Silverman's page. Prior art!
Okay, okay, so it's the opposite transformation (not using sub instead of not using add), but still...
Do not moderate this post.
A solution to the problem with music today
I've never used AvantGo, so I may be off base here....
But, keep in mind the distinction between a novel technical idea, and able execution. Strong marketing, engineering, and usability are all admirable, but they're not patentable. Reading other comments, I gather that the technology is uninspired (if competent), so I suspect that other factors are responsible for the success of AvantGo.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
So, what it comes down to is that this is just another bad software patent, claiming inventions on things that someone of reasonable skill in the art should know.
Given who sits at the head of the PTO and his background, this isn't going to change anytime soon.
Plucker uses a completely different, server-independant solution to gather content. It is de-centralized, and does not rely on a single point of failure. It is client-driven, not server driven. Here's some other reasons why Plucker exceeds AvantGo:
- Plucker has two forms of compression (zlib/doc), AvantGo does not.
- Plucker supports 12 languages, AvantGo does not.
- Plucker supports local files (file://tmp/foo.txt) and intranet
(including https://) content, AvantGo does not.
- Plucker supports runtime image scaling, panning, zooming via the parser ([alt]maxwidth, [alt]maxheight),
AvantGo does not.
- Plucker allows runtime bit-depth changes in the viewer. AvantGo does not.
- Plucker is an 85k footprint on the Palm, AvantGo 4.0 is
399k, without content.
- Plucker supports Gestures, Autoscroll, Tap Navigation, and Hardware button configuration options, AvantGo does not.
- Plucker is
free and open source, under the GNU General Public License, AvantGo is not.
- Plucker does not require
that you have your Palm with you in the cradle to gather, sync, and create content. AvantGo does.
- Plucker uses an openly-documented data structure format,
and integrates with other parsers and gathering applications like SiteScooper. AvantGo does not.
- Plucker works on
11 platforms, 5 operating systems (with varying degrees of difficulty), AvantGo supports 1.5 OS' (Windows, and "almost" Macintosh).
- Plucker does not
"restrict" what websites can do with their own content, AvantGo does.
- Plucker supports multiple instances of the same content (NYTimes with images, NYTimes
with color, NYTimes without images) loaded at the same time, AvantGo does not.
- You can beam your Plucker content to another Plucker user, with AvantGo you
cannot.
- Plucker offers 5 font choices, AvantGo offers 2.
- Plucker does not have a maximum file size limitation; spider 20 meg databases if you want,
AvantGo limits you to 200-300k.
- Plucker does not "block" content. AvantGo does.
- Plucker does not "charge" for usage of Plucker, nor "fine" people for using it too much. AvantGo does (and steeply, at $6,000 per year if you exceed "contract" usage rates.
While they may think they have a wonderful, bloated product, which I'm sure appeals to corporate entities with $50,000/year to waste away without much functionality, and giving up control of their own content, I still believe that Plucker has a much better future overall. It's smaller, faster, more capable, and very well documented. It's also actively maintained, on a near-daily basis. When was the last time an update from AvantGo came around?Also, if AvantGo was the leader in this space, why are dozens of other companies moving to using Plucker instead?
That's what they said about the wearable ATM.
It's a fundamental requirement that patents be non-obvious to someone skilled in the art. I really don't see how this is so.
It is long well-settled that section 103 unobviousness cannot be determined by a hindsight review of a solution and a casual estimation of how "good" or "clever" is the solution.
Being first to "stumble" upon a problem is often itself part of invention. The difference between invention, discovery and dumb luck, in this regard, is metaphysical at most. But the manner of making an invention cannot negative its patentability. No spark of genius, or even radical variation is required.
The question is whether it was inventive, that is, first. What was the prior art, and would Verne, if he knew it all, think to put it together to make an Avant Go.
In short, the meaning of unobviousness isn't all that obvious, as the law of patents goes. Your standard, however interesting, doesn't relate to the standard used for the Patent act.