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."
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
Wasn't the federal gov trying to make incryption illegal
Think SSSCA and DMCA...they're trying to make it illegal not to use encryption.
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
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"
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/
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
What they want is encryption in the hands of those with the power, not the rest of us.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
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.
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
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?
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
Someone should set up an "Anti-Patent" website.
That is not going to be effective, someone else could just pick up the idea and patent it. And even though there would be prior art, the patent being issued only begs this problem, the original inventor would have to incur significant legal burden to cancel the patent.
However, your idea would work if another spin on the "anti-patent" was taken (I believe this was posted on Slashdot a couple years back). Inventors would go and patent their works, and then allow anyone to use them, provided their original design remained open. This is similar to the GPL for software, except that since there was a patent involved, there was a much less questionable force of law backing the "anti-patent". By the time the patent expired, there would most likely be no economic incentive to keep the idea secret anymore.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
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.
No no no. That's re-invented every day in thousands of engineering classrooms and other such places around the world.
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
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.
Try Bust Patents
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,
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.
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.
Yeah after all, anyone who uses encryption must have something to hide, and if you have something to hide from the goverment, then you must be a criminal.
While we are talking about patents, I think I'll get a patent on factoring, but only factoring of numbers on thursdays. This way I can get my lawyers to go after anybody useing SSH on a Thursday.
Then I'm going to get a pantent on a method of looking at people ugly with my eyeballs, and sue people who give me dirty looks for my awsome patents.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Yesterday I received final approval on my patent for including an encryption/decryption device in a box of cereal.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Enigma
PS: of-course German government is not US government but it is a government still...
You can't handle the truth.
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?
-... ---
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.
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.)
.
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
Hate to break it to you, but the power grab happened a long time ago. Watch them maintain the status quo.
I ate my sig.
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