Slashdot Mirror
Patent Claimed on System-Level Encryption
nattt writes "The Register is reporting that a Californian firm, Maz Technologies has been granted a patent for application independant file encryption, and is now going after other companies with its lawyers to press its claims. It seems that the US patent office doesn't check very well for prior art, and their laxity is causing small firms that get attacked on infringing these bad patents a lot of money to defend themselves."
Wasn't the federal gov trying to make incryption illegal... I may be misinformed
Just a thought ... would it be possible for these small companies to sue the US Patent Office for costs relating to bad patents?
Now we don't have to worry about CBDTPA. Because even if the FCC tells the tech industry to adopt encryption to protect content, we can say "Sorry Disney, er, FCC...but that technology has been patented!"
Why didn't we think of this. Let's get patents on watermarking and other intrusive technologies being rammed down our throats by content providers. Then just sit on them and thumb our noses.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
If they are suing already, doesn't that invalidate the patent by demonstrating prior art before the patent was applied for?
"No good deed goes unpunished"
For a device consisting of a circular device with a whole through the middle. When two of these are mounted on opposite sides of a shaft and suitibly housed, they can become useful for reducing the friction caused by dragging an object down a road.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
We need more bad patents like this. The more of a problem this becomes, the more likely Congress is going to do something about it. And as long as the patents are as ridiculous as this one, and as long as they go after companies with money before they go after open source, everything's fine as far as I'm concerned.
Wouldn't it be funny if some organization in the US government has prior art on this patent? Say the NSA or FBI, perhaps the Army, Air Force or CIA? Somewhere in there somebody developed a computer system which encrypted every single communications which took place at the system level.
The nice folks over at sci.crypt seems to have listed quite a few cases of possible prior art.
Not that that makes it much better on the whole, but...
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Attack the small firms first so they cannot afford to invalidate the patent. Meanwhile when the small firms start paying royalties your patent will become more established. By the way the 25 000 in royalties is nothing compared to what the case may cost. So that company will probably pay the fee if hey cannot get an early win in court.
I see this as proof that the USPTO doesn't bother checking for prior art at all. How the hell could they possibly have missed the many examples if they had? Shit, even ntfs has been doing that for years.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
secret use is not prior art.
But if the above mentioned agency put their computer on sale, or used it publicly then it would be prior art.
Why not directly sue Microsoft, Sun, HP, IBM? Somewhere along the line one of these companies offered system level encryption.
Or maybe this dinky unknown company saw a way to squeeze money out of little companies who they thought couldn't afford to fight back?
This would seem to be a good example of how the patent system is being mis-used at present. Apparently this patent is very widely defined and not backed up by much 'implementation'. this would generally not be considered a very 'defendable' patent, yet the owners are trying it on with a bunch of middle level software vendors, trying to strong arm some cash from them.
w here sfs (Secure File System) exists, and this page was LAST updates in september 1996, and covers just about every possible level of eccryption in a general file system, it is also not unique.
The difficulty with this is that the patent gives the owner a degree of 'high-ground', and defending against this from the point of view of the apparent patent violator, can be VERY expensive, so often just coughing up is the cheapest option, which then lends weight to the defendability of the patent.
Certainly, being filed in 1998 makes this particular patent laughable.
for exmaple, have a look at:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/sfs/
On a more serious note, the patent officer really needs to get off its ass. This is absurd. I'm going to patent substitution boxes, bitwise transpositions, and while I'm at it, hash functions and the use of a 'key' to permutate text.
I find it quite disturbing that our United States patent office will accept such a broad claim, needless to say. What I find even more disturbing, however, is the precident for accepting such patent claims without, as the article states, any such encryption programs being submitted.
In my mind, it's one thing to stake your claim to an invention or creation of your own doing, something that you have already built. Even what may be viewed as a "fair" patent process, however, I object to on the principle that it tends to create unnecessary monopolization of certain products and only serves to lock down profits for one party. Patents, in my mind, are a competitive, money-making scheme and nothing more. It's another thing entirely, however, to patent an idea, preventing others from using it possibly, without submitting any such art of your own.
Think about this for a moment. If companies are allowed to patent thoughts and ideas they have not created, then this only creates a rush to create patents and not a race for innovation. If "prior art" of your own is not required in a patent submission, then the application for patents becomes nothing more than financial speculation on future technologies.
-Niten
Dot com bomb burst your little bubble? No need to worry! Keep your company in the black with our patented 'Profit by patent' system! We research existing fundamental technologies (the alphabet for example!) and patent them for you! All you have to do is wait for a chance to sue someone using your newly patented technology! No more pesky R&D! No nerdy programmers and engineers!
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We need look no further than our good friend the Clipper chip for a good example of government created prior art that is covered by this patent.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
very true. its no "a" food group. its "the" food group.
Encryption is only for terrorists. Therefore, everyone who encrypts is a terrorist. The RIAA is trying to get A LOT of things encrypted. So the RIAA is made up of A LOT of terrorists.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Prior art is something you have to declare in your patent filing, I believe. You have to say what things, if any, are similar to this (the idea is to put your discovery in perspective for the reviewer)
If they can show you LIED on the prior art section... your patent can be overturned.
Also.. prior art means prior PATENTS that are similar.
He uses 'storage level encryption' in the way he wrote in mirror image.
the patent on patents themselves.
could I not enter in a patent on legal documentation providing the holder of said documents protection against competing entities who wish to develop similar products to the holders.
since they'll never find the prior art in this matter, my patent will be granted, thus rending all other patents and the USPTO totally powerless...!
nah, that's just silly talk.
This is a wake up call. This is the most fucked up thing to come out of a fucked up patent office.
This is not fucked up just because it indicates that the USPTO is incompetent. As someone else has said, this patent indicates that the USPTO is not doing a poor job, it is doing NO job.
That means that shysters like this company can be granted a patent and embark on the typical shyster lawsuit strategy: small fry first, maybe some bigger game later, and of course ignore the big game because the big game will eat them and their entire families.
Let's sum up. This company with this bogus patent is nothing but a racket, a group of hoodlums, a pack of criminals hoping to make a quick score. Either than, or they are criminally stupid. And the USPTO is abetting the criminally stupid by failing to do anything remotely resembling their job.
They're all part of a big family by the name of Mud that keeps on gettin bigger.
I'm going to get a patent on granting bad patents, then sue the PTO. :)
"It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton
It's easy to come on /. and complain about how the patent system sucks. If you want to have a real effect in changing how the 'system' works, maybe you'd like a career there?
I bet the US patent office would shape up really quick if they were liable for all the court costs companies incur defending themselves from hogwash like this.
It's painfully obvious the patent office is not going to change their ways after seeing patent after patent issued without checking for prior art. Perhaps a way around that would be to push for a law that would require a "quiet period" for filing lawsuits related to the patent following the issuance of a patent. How long did this company wait after receiving the patent before filing the lawsuit, a couple of weeks?
When a company (or person) receives a patent, they have to wait at least 1 year before dragging anyone into court related to that patent. That will give the court of public opinion (slashdot) time to find and point out the mistake to the patent office and hopefully they will make amends.
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
quoth the AMD CEO:
In 2001, we had more than a thousand AMD patents granted, many on process technology.
That's a long way from a million. Doesn't seem like AMD is contributing much to your million a year. I know, I'm disappointed too.
Also, probably not too many of those had anything to do with encryption. So that would lessen your number somewhat.
Finally, reflect that with that many patents, it couldn't be that hard to find one which might have shown some prior art. So your point actually undermines itself.
Does anybody remember KOH (potassium hydroxide) virus? It was a boot sector program that would IDEA encrypt your hard disks and floppies. It was also set up so that if you take an encrypted floppy to a "uninfected" computer, a simple dir a: would then set up encryption (at a y/n prompt). Of if that is just considered a "user level app", how about CFS for linux?
Or StegFS?
Or even NTFS (as an earlier poster well... umm posted)?
What about a container partition (ScramDisk).
Oh well.. I guess there's no prior art.
I am going to file a patent on patenting prior art and taking legal action.
I'm going to be rich!
Of course if that doesn't work I can write a book
HOWTO: File a patent on prior art and take legal action.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Someone hurry up and patent "windowing" in software GUIs.
The US Patent & Trademark Office is basically a rubber-stamp operation these days because there is no incentive for an examiner to deny an invalid patent. Conversely, patent examiners have every incentive to grant patents without serious review and simply let the bad patents be litigated by private parties. If memory serves, neither the examiner nor the USPTO can be held liable for granting bogus patents without proof that the examiner or USPTO acted with actual malice towards the plaintiff in granting the patent - practically speaking, an impossible standard to meet.
I'm not anti-patent per se - I believe they serve their constitutional purpose in certain circumstances - but I do think that if left unchecked, the current US patent regime will ultimately lead to the same sort of industrial consolidation and resultant economic stagnation that Japan has been experiencing for over a decade. Patents aren't the only or even the main factor that has led Japan to its current situation, of course, but their patent system coupled with incestuous cross-licensing relationships within and among Japan's keiretsu has all but eliminated start-ups and smaller enterprises, particularly in high-tech industry, while the larger IT firms have become moribund from lack of competition (see NEC, Hitachi).
Just my opinions, of course.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
BFD.
Go read it here
Someone should set up an "Anti-Patent" website. A place where people can submit ideas, algorithms etc that they DON'T want to see patented - basically, a formal way of establishing the public domain.
A trust-worthy date stamp on each "anti-patent" would establish what was "prior art" and what was not.
Whereas broad patents are difficult to get accepted, broad "anti-patents" would be accepted easily.
This would make it easier for the patent guys (and defendents) to determine what was "prior art" and what was not.
Fewer patents = fewer patent problems
The irritating part is the USPO knows it has problems but seemingly refuses to do anything.
I remember seeing an interview with the head of the office a while ago, and he reacted to this exact criticism by insisting it was OUR (yours and mine) fault for not bringing prior art to their attention.
> Why don't I just patent you take a pill and it reverses aging?
The trick is that you have to hit the right window - if no one comes up with one in 17 years, your patent expires and you're SOL.
1.) A giant big smoking hole where the office used to be would be a good start.
2.) Realistically, after firing all current employees for sheer incompetence, hire new ones at much higher salaries. Make their performance conditional on *not approving* patents. The more rejections for prior art or being obvious, the more pay the examiner is given. Companies should also be liable for bad patents. A company could forfeit over 10% of its assets for a patent granted that was either obvious or prior art.
This should stop parasites like Rambus in their tracks.
3.) Remove patent protection entirely for "business methods" and software patents, and sharply reduce all patent terms to 5 yr terms, which can be renewed only 4 times maximum. The companies now have to show their R&D cost for developing the patent, and once their is a profit made the patent cannot be renewed again.
The price for increasing the length of the patents
increases, doubling every time it is renewed.
4.) In general, prevent indefinite extension of copyright and patents. This means that anyone will be able to market Mickey Mouse etc.
Since there's most probably prior-art for this patent, I wonder if the companies being pursued could file suit against the PTO to recover defense costs if it is indeed found that the patent is invalid.
Maybe then the PTO would actually start doing its work instead of pretending to....
AC comments get piped to
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/opa/kids /kidprimer.html
There are no age restrictions on applying for a patent, but only the true inventor is entitled to a patent.
The only way to get Congress' attention is either buy buying some attention (beaucoup bucks, [don't worry about soft money bans. They'll find someother loophole. After all they wrote the damn legislation,]) or stating a patent on something they might actually CARE about. (That leaves YOU out, that's for sure.)
Like the patenting ability to use the words "Yea" and "Nay" to record assent or dissent with a statement or perhaps the the passing of legislation for the purposes of levying taxes to pay for expernses without visibly providing any actual services...
Then you should duck real quick because the military will be shooting and they won't be blanks.
Don't worry about find a lawyer who'll do it. (Like who would be that stupid and self destructive/defeating?) Look under any rock, behind any ambulance or in the bark of dying trees. There's sure to be some form of slug or parasite. I know plenty of lawyers. Some of my most worthless relatives are pond scum, uh, lawyers.
Lawyers are ALL that stupid. When the achieve brain death, they run for office so they can pass more laws "for other people."
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This patent is too wide-scoped for mere "private companies". Huge corporations have OS-independant encryption. They have the money to fund this sort of lawsuit. Hell, they have more money than the government, since they are the ones paying off the government for this sort of thing anyway.
Zodiac Survey
The claims of this patent seem to be limited to the situation where there is an application client
Take GNU Emacs for example.
and a backend "Document Management System" (DMS)
Any file system.
in which there is a crypto module
File system encryption module.
intervenes when a file-save command or the like is issued from the client
fopen() in glibc.
which then encrypts the data with an appropriate key
Encrypted block driver.
hands off control to the DMS.
return from the block driver to the filesystem to libc to the app.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I work as a draftsman. My name goes on every drawing that I do. The very least that should be done is to subject the examaner who failed on this to public humiliation. If they think the patent is good let us see their name and the name of his/her boss while we are at this.
I would love to put a face to this farce.
Would it be possible for a number of small firms that have lost a lot of money and time wasted over these lawsuits produced by the Patent Office's lack of care in looking for prior art to actually take a class action lawsuit against the Patent Office? Perhaps, they could try and prove loss of wealth and try and prove that the Patent Office is failing?
Just a thought, yes I know its an expense to do..But just wondered.
StarTux
Claim 1 of Patent 6,185,681 seems very similar to:
A Cryptographic File System for Unix by Matt Blaze (1993)
http://www.crypto.com/papers/cfs.pdf
Design and Implementation of a Transparent Cryptographic File System for
Unix (1996)
http://www.tcfs.it/docs/tcfs.ps
Linux Journal Issue 40: TCFS: Transparent Cryptographic File System
(August 1997)
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=2174
...you know, that deal where you place some real effort into a task and get money in exchange? But they are not interested in that, oh noooo....lets just get all law suit happy. Some people should have gotten spanked a few times as kids.
Need prior art proof? What about the US Military. Doesn't their encoding and decoding of messages they sent as far back as WWII fall under this patent? It was transferred over an electronic medium. (Even though it was only to convert it to RF.) Too far fetched? What about Mr. Walker from the '80s? What was it he was taking from that boat again?? Oh yea! KEYCODES HE WAS SELLING TO THE USSR! Wait, that's send a document over an electronic medium too...
Idiots.
-TDA-
It's fucking sad, we have a bunch of government agencies that are incapable of doing their jobs, a group of CEO's that are incapable of comprenending morality, moms and dads that get their info from the twisted mass media, sisters and brothers that are too twisted on X, MTV, religion, whatever, to see or even care about the asteroid that almost hit the earth a couple of days ago.... Let alone understand the problems with patent law.
I say it's time for us all to give up. There's no point to talk about this kind of shit. The only people who are capable of making a judgement on this kind of stuff are high court judges. No one else cares. Most are incapable of even understanding.
"C" is for cookie, that's good enough for me.
Read about here
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
I think there should be a 2,6 or even a year long wait on patents...once they're approved by the patent office, put up a web site for each patent. When someone goes to the site who knows of prior art or some other problem with the patent, that person simply types in what's wrong, hits submit. The patent office reads that person's claim, does research for what had been claimed wrong, and can reject the patent upon that.
Then the patent office can afford to get rid of some people....the industry is responsible for keeping care of its own patents...copm sci people scan through the comp sci patents, engineers scan through the engineering patents in their field every now and then...etc. etc.
though, then again, maybe there're just too many patents being filed for this to help much...
What would happen if every single small company that was threatened simply refused to show up in court if sued? Instead, just send in a form letter stating that the patent is total and complete BS and then list every other company that has been simultaneously sued and subsequently refused to go to court for the same reason. Technically, that's probably contempt of the court or something, but at some point this nonsense has to stop simply because it is hurting small tech companies. Call it the.. uh.. Boston Patent Party or something. (-: IANAL and this is neither legal advice nor personal recommendation.
I did system level encryption in 1978 on the mainframe VM/CMS system. Under the CMS component, which ran in a virtual machine, all I/O was done through an interface known as SVC 202 . This interface was used for modular execution of both external (a file) and internal functions. I wrote a program in assembly language which first ran in what was known as the "transient area". This program then allocated memory on a permanent basis, and copied part of itself there. That part was written in relocateable assembly code (was not hard to do in S/370 assembler). It then substituted the SVC interrupt vector with its own, and intercepted all SVC instruction traps. The intercept handler was now in control and the program did a graceful exit, but without deallocating the memory. This was similar to the DOS TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident) feature. The intercept handler checked for SVC traps being code 202. If not, it passed them on to the original SVC handler in CMS. If it was 202, then it checked for the request name for reading and writing. If that matched, it then checked to see if it was a file to be encrypted (writing) or decrypted (reading). CMS had disk letter/number combinations added to each file, and I allowed the program to be told to use either a letter (specific disk) or number (file mode) to be matched to indicate that the file was encrypted. It them modified the buffer appropriately before (writing) or after (reading) the system function completed. The net effect was the ability to have selected files, or a whole disk, encrypted. All native CMS programs, and some OS/VS/MVS emulated programs, would successfully do I/O through this encryption system. I was able to edit a Fortran program, save it, and compile it with the Fortran G compiler, and subsequently run it. I placed a call to my encryption facility in a script called "PROFILE EXEC A1" which made it run every time I logged in. It prompted me for the key, which was a string that was hashed to construct the encryption vector for the algorithm I used (which is probably terribly insecure today).
I was a student at Ohio University at the time. A group of us were "hackers" (and at times did a little cracking, too). All the disk space was partition-like slices on big (in the physical sense, about the size of a small washing machine) hard drives shared with a lot of other people. The computer center administrators could easily spy on any user's disk space. So this was used as a means to keep nosey people out. About 3 months after I started regularly using this, I was summoned to the office of the Director of Academic Affairs at the computer center. I was told by Dr. Craig Farrar that he was aware that I was encrypting my files, and that this was against computer center and university policy. He gave me a copy of the policy. He was at least an honest man, and also told me it was a brand new policy adopted specifically because I was encrypting my files. He then told me I had 2 days to unencrypt all files before the disk space would be entirely erased. I simply backed up most of them to a private tape, removed it, and unencrypted a few remaining files and deleted the rest. I never used the program again.
When the PC came out with DOS, and I learned of TSR, I thought about that program, and thought I'd like to do the same thing again. I didn't at that time because I didn't make the committment to learn x86 assembly, and didn't have a suitable C compiler at the time. So a DOS version, unfortunately, never actually happened. However, I did see among some shareware on a BBS, around 1989, a description of a program that did exactly that. Unfortunately for that program, at that time I was doing the Amiga thing. Hopefully someone can track down that program.
When I moved to Texas in 1993, I left all my old mainframe tapes (about 120 of them by then) behind. I had gotten hooked on Linux and swore to never use a mainframe again, so I had them discarded. Now I wish I had them back, because I could now run them on Linux using emulators ... after I figured out how to get stuff off those old tapes.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I saw this on sci.crypt today and my interest was piqued in that I am currently trying to shoot down another bogus patent (that's another story). Anyway, I looked up the patent, U.S. 6,185,681 (Zizz) and specifically checked out the Examiner's name and the Asst. Examiner's name to see if either one was the same dull-witted wonk who "examined" the patent I'm otherwise researching.
Now the goddamned USPTO is slashdotted so I can't get those names for you right now, but they were different names for both the Examiner and the Asst. Examiner. So now we have at least 4 clueless fucknuts working at the USPTO. I'm willing to bet they're the tip of the iceberg. *sigh
Also check out this article on patent strategies of japanese companies. I do not claim to be a scholar here and freely concede that mmy posts are not scholarly works. That said, they do derive from the cumulative impact of articles I have read in a variety of sources over the years. I invite you to do some more research yourself to dispute my view - indeed, a quick google search reveals plenty of B-school theses fawning over the Japanese tendency towards cross-licensing to the extent that it permits more than one company to extract monopoly rents from a market, though I would dispute (again, admittedly without my own body of scholarly work) the assumption that this is a good thing from a macroeconomic perspective. If anything, I think this would reinforce my point, but since nobody (that I've found) has directly studied the impact of cross-licensing on companies excluded from the "club," as it were, I cannot provide you with an online reference directly supporting my proposition wrt stifling of innovation.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
It seems to me that everyone wants a knowledgable patent office that can understand (most) technologies that come into it's office.
I think that what will happen is that companies and individuals will get fed up with the system and change it. Eventually, patents will be almost non-existant because the system will require PROOF of non-prior art, other than the current model, which only hints at the notion.
I'll agree that this is getting out of hand and anyone who claims a patent and files a suit against any company, should have to PAY for ALL legal fees of BOTH parties, if they want to pursue the patent.
This would keep folks like the idiot here from filing, getting and then pursuing a lawsuit for the patent he was given.
my 0.02 cents
What about Microsoft's Encrypted File System, built-in to Windows 2000? It's a transparent encryption/decryption process trapped by a EFS driver right above the I/O system, built into NTFS 5. Wouldn't this technology be subject to this patent?
How about this idea. File those patents. "Codeing Methodology for the discovering of Directory Structures for data stored in an Electronic form" (ls dir etc) Then.... give the patent to the FSF. Yep give it to them. This puts the patent in the public domain,sort of. Then it will do two things. One ensure ridiculous patents don't get filled (since you filled first and can sue the pants off of them.) and two, it give the FSF a source of revenue. Just a thought.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
With all the patents that the patent office fails to check, couldn't they be held liable if a non-valid patent goes thru and is used to sue a company out of existence?
I would think it would be possible for the company that lost due to an invalid patent to sue the patent office for wrongful conduct due to their own screwup which can be proven to have screwed up many times before.
Having been patent examiner in the European Patent Office from 1991-1997 I am completely disillusioned by the system; be it in US or EU. It was meant to help the little inventor but has been turned into one of the main weaponry for the multis to fend competition off. What we experience here is a case of many to come: investors started a few years ago to file for ridiculous, general stuff. For the sole purpose to be able one day to present their bills in case the ridiculous is being granted. Try to get a huge portfolio of patents covering a good deal of everyday-life-stuff; pay a lot for it; but finally sue unsuspicious Tom and Harry for royalties! I'd like to see the patent (which US-does it have?), because US law demands the applicant to cite the best prior art available to him. (EPO law does not.) If you can *prove* he didn't, you can file for throwing it it (it is difficult, though). Or just finding a relevant document published in time identifying precisely the same concept (USPTO is usually leniant in granting for microscopic inventiveness. That is, if you cannot attack the novelty, be prepared to spend a fortune. I'm sure, one day they'll come sfter OpenSource as well; especially those who now start to charge. Does anyone know the current case law for infringement if you distribute the patented stuff for free?? In earlier days, that had been really difficult!
Clearly, there are no "Einsteins" in the patent office :)
What I am far more worried about is the European patent office. Unlike the American counterpart, the European one is funded based principly on it's own revenues from patent applications. Certainly they have every reason and incentive to encourage both the filing and granting of patents no matter how poor they are.
Whoa, someone actually tried to validate an opinon. Now if you would just provide some links to this experiment, and we will provide some peer review. Otherwise, I am tempted to dismiss this as just another frost pist.
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
I (grub.net Industries) have been granted a patent on:
"Voluntarily moderated muscle ring for the controlled
expulsion of solid and semi-solid waste from the posterior
opening of the alimentary canal."
Please note that I claim immediate control of all such devices. grub.net Industries' team of highly paid lawyers will station in all hospital delivery rooms to receive our license fee from the parents before the child first uses our product.
If you have been using said product without paying our license fee please note that you are in direct violation of patent law and may be held liable for damages.
You are ordered to cease use of The Product immediately until said license fee ($100 at birth, 25 cents per use thereafter) to grub.net Industries.
Thank you for your time.
Trolling is a art,
Ibm has had system level encrypion happening for over 8 years that I know of, probably longer, with hardware supporting the encryption so that it was totally transparent to the user. All this demonstrates is that the patent process itself is dead, and unenforceable. Anything they approve/disapprove is just random junk. Welcome to the 21st Century. How do we regulate technology that is diverging in so many directions so rapidly?
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
IANAL, and I'm taking the article at face value, but assuming the issue really is this cut and dried, could the companies that are being threatened sue the USPTO for negligence or dereliction of duty? It seems that a patent on encryption technology, submitted in 1998, that mentioned no other encryption system, is obviously flawed. If the USPTO let such a patent claim through, as I see it, the only explanation is that they are failing to perform due dilligence. Is that not their legal duty?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
What about Prior Art ?? - As long as I was with the EPO at least, I'm proud to say, "we" were better / stricter than USPTO. I surely remember some cases, but cannot mention those here.
Sure, EPO is self-funded and needs applications. But "we" always had more than enough. On the other hand, US policy in general is more business-focused and business-friendly. Even more: like DoJ seems to side with M$ to keep it running ("World Domination"), my impression was USPTO grants patents with preference to US companies ("conquer the world market" / "keep foreign products out").
Decide for yourself, which is worse!
Now, if anyone, ever asks the stupid question about why software patents are bad, this is one hell of a example.
Think aout it, a lot of people have been working on THIS since 1998 only to have someone come to them 4 years later and tell them that they can't continue since it's now a patented idea.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
More than 10 years ago I worked for a company that produced an ISA card that DES encrypted the entire disk transparently to any OS that used the BIOS calls. We also had drivers for SCO Unix that allowed any file system to be encrypted. Our system was used by private corporations, the FBI, Delta Force (which according to a guy named Major Harrington doesn't exist, and never to to ship packages Attn: Delta Force, Fort Bragg), and several other governmental agencies.
Barring the fact that DES is no longer considered unbreakable, the card rendered the HD in a system unrecoverable without the card installed. *Every* sector was encrypted, including the boot sector. To gain access, you had to enter a user name and password (similiar to a BIOS password) when the machine started. After 3 failed attempts, the machine had to be power cycled to try again (to prevent keyboard spoofing attacks).
At one time, if I recall correctly, we had a contest for a high stakes prize if anyone defeated the system. Several universities attempted it, and all failed.
This system was considered the ultimate in security until the 386 machines started appearing on the market. Because of the CPU cache, it became possible with some sophisticated trickery to defeat the system.
If anyone feels this information is relevant to this patent, and can *seriously* use additional information (this product is not a current product, so please don't ask where you can buy one), please feel free to contact me at the above email address.
I know little to nothing about patent processes, but I believe this definitely constitutes prior art.
I hate to say this, but M$ may be on our side on this one. They are damaged by the patent (I vaguely recall having encrypted filesystem as an option when I tried to put win2k on a VMWare system), and they certainly have the money to squish this Maz Technologies like a bug.
You would think... but with the utter nonsense Fritz Hollings and company would like to see law - to the tune of regulating all hardware and software - including open source, I think you better start looking for heros elsewhere
What is comes down to is the US Congress is nothing but a bunch of lawyers who represent the interest of - lawyers. The government is *encouraging* this behavior (they can't help it - it's in their blood) and would never act to stop it.
While secret use cannot be used to negate a patent, it can, in fact, be used to steal a patent. In the US, patent rights go to the first to invent, not the first to patent.
that is some what accurate. examiners can use almost anything with a few restrictions.
most people don't realize thatthe amount of time that the examiner has to dedicate to each case is fairly limited.
it also doesn't help that with respect to patent literature, there isn't nearly as much available in the software realm as there is to hardware.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
actualy im a patent examiner and he is correct.
if you are the inventor of the application, yes your own work can't be held against you, but you can only declare priority for your applicaton for up to one year before it was filed.
it gives you an incentive to file earlier.
an examiner can use nearly anything to reject a patent claim. ive used page pages and even a video game screenshot.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Yesterday I received final approval on my patent for including an encryption/decryption device in a box of cereal.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
What I don't understand is: why doesn't at least one of these smaller companies find a way to sue the Patent and Trademark Office for not doing sufficient background checks, and therefore creating opportunity for these patent suits to begin with?
It seems to me that the PTO is liable for the damages smaller (and bigger!) companies face. After all, if the PTO did its job, the suits wouldn't be happening.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Enigma
PS: of-course German government is not US government but it is a government still...
You can't handle the truth.
Brilliant - I'm in the process of forming a company with a product range partly involving application & OS independent file encryption (albeit on Handhelds so got to read their patent)...
Why can't the bloody dickheads check for prior art and then tell MAZ to go and play with their train set somewhere else...
Rant over.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
I wrote a Linux loop driver to do what this patent claims, and can proove it was prior to the date this patent was submitted. I based my work on the work of others that had done similar (I had improved upon it), so the date would be even earlier.
I just sent PC Dynamics a note wrt this silly patent. I hope they have the resources to defeat it.
All organisations, whether a large corporation or a federal office, eventually fall behind the times. This appears to have happened (although certainly not suddently) with the US Patent Office. A major re-structing and often a major re-thinking of the organisation's practices and direction is necessary.
The USPO needs to get with the times. They need to hire a panel of experts and outside consultants to act as the "devil's advocates" for all high-tech patent claims. This is necessary, because the USPO as it is today seems competely unable to find prior art, and this is resulting in a great number of ridiculous patent awards such as this one.
Perhaps the USPO would wake up if it washeld financially responsible? If a court throws out a new patent (based on obvious prior art) the first time that the owners of it try to use it to attack other companies (like is happening here), then that company and the USPO would share in the financial responisibity for the court costs of the defendants. That would make the USPO think twice about granting stupid patents.
Perhaps while they are at it, they should re-think the notion that patents encourage technological development. A good debate would make us feel better about whatever the outcome of it is.
Why not directly sue Microsoft, Sun, HP, IBM? Somewhere along the line one of these companies offered system level encryption.
Or maybe this dinky unknown company saw a way to squeeze money out of little companies who they thought couldn't afford to fight back?
You answered your own question.
To get the most mileage out of a patent, law, etc. that can be applied many times:
- First sue/prosecute a little guy with negligable resources and (if applicable) a bad reputation or history. (For censorship laws, for instance, start with a kiddie pornographer before going after Playboy.)
- With your precedent established, work your way up to deeper pockets and more reputable defendants.
That way you get the most convictions and (if applicable) the most money before somebody manges to spike you - if anybody manages to spike you at all.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Couldn't these companies turn around and sue the patent office? After all, if the patent office had no liability whatsoever, why would they bother checking against any patents or prior art at all?
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But i find it unlikely that whatever secret government agency discovered it will: - want a patent - go forth and disclose sensitive info in court to get that patent.
Good job and good luck.
So, bugs permitting, the prior art may well be widespread - see: http://www.avp.ch/avpve/boot/koh.stm
The encryption algorithm used is IDEA, I believe.
Steff
This is an example of why I believe that the current patent system is so broken that we'd be better off without any patent system.
It sure isn't my top priority, but I would find myself hard pressed to vote for any politician that said a good word in favor of patents. This despite the fact that there do exist quite reasonable patents, and a decent patent system would actually strenghten the country (though it would always be quite dangerous: always remember that a patent is a kind of government approved monopoly. It can't be made safe. That's a part of the reason that it was made temporary.)
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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Re Step 425, "Crypto Server Traps Event", Grail said, There is a catch here - perhaps you could argue that, in order to be covered by this patent, the crypto package would have to intercept the "File/Save" event before that event actually got to the application. You are correct. They are trapping when the user selects "save" from the application menu, NOT when the file is written to disk.
They probably meant to say that the system intercepted reads/writes to particular files on the filesystem. That's how SafeHouse (the product they're suing) does it. Oh well, too late to change the patent now. <g>
I also liked
Step 420: Command is translated into an event.
Waddaya mean translated? Modern operating systems handle this as an event by default.
Step 430: Should document be encrypted?
Funny that this decision seems to be made without interaction from the user. In other words, the user doesn't decide which documents are or are not encrypted. (at least not at run time).
The description of the technology in the patent is vague enough that I wonder if they had actually implemented this at the time. Oh, another funny thing... Maz Technology doesn't seem to have a product that does what this patent claims to do. Hmm.... You're not allowed to patent someone else's invention. <g>
Maz does have this product called IntelliGuard, which has a great marketing description, but to me the description seems rather... lite. I wonder if they've actually implemented anything even now. (It also claims to provide an infinite number of customer's options. At least they got the infinity problem licked.)
-gh
DISCLAIMER: this post is a statement of opinion and not of fact. (Just in case any laywers are reading...)
For the full text of the patent, visit USPTO Search Page and enter the patent number 6185681.
See also a sci.crypt discussion on google groups
As the guy that is the accused infringer in all of this...I can tell you the biggest problem of all is the cost to mount a defense - even when you are totally convinced (as are your peers) that you are in the right. I can understand that software patents are hard to review...so maybe we should back down on granting them. It really has gotten to the point where a lot of patents are granted not because of outright genuity on the part of the inventor - but on who wrote up an application first, no matter how common the concept is. I use the word "common" instead of "simple" because even complex issues may well have common or obvious solutions simply because an experienced developer will always find a way to code something up to achieve the required result. I went through this exact same thing in 1994 with a patent granted to somebody for putting a logo in software. Strange but true. So it was then claimed my Energizer Bunny screen saver infringed. I had a license to use the bunny, but the patent owner claimed that by having it dash across the screen, I was infringing. After getting a bunch of articles published about the problem, Bruce Lehman issued an executive order to reexam/invalidate the patent. Still, it cost me a pile of dollars and nearly put me out of business. The owner had sent letters to my software distributors accusing them of contributory patent infringement -- so they dropped me and my sales went to zero overnight. Fortunately for me, both then and now, the patents I've been accused of infringing have been so broad that they hit close to home for many people, so getting attention has not been too difficult. But what about patents with a more narrow scope? Even if 4 out of 5 programmers and dentists agree that there is prior art or the idea is just totally obvious, the guy playing defense doesn't have a chance. The initial legal retainer alone is typically $25-50K or more. The last time I went through this my lawyer said even a slam dunk victory would cost over 100K+ just to go through the motions. Peter
What's even sadder is that nobody seems to have noticed that your "good friend" cscx totally ripped off The Onion and tried to pass it off as his own. Maybe when he writes something original he'll get modded up.
Why can't they be sued for the damages and any costs of lawyers/lawsuits themselves? If that would be possible, and if it could be stuck to some persons (and not some business that isn't anymore anyway) then people would think twice before risking their own ruin with those patent scams. Also their own lawyers should be the last in the line to collect any outstanding payments, that way they could only hire lawyers who believed that the patent was at least half valid.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks