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Transparent Web Caching Patented

Posted by simoniker on from the time-to-get-the-checkbooks-out dept.

JohnQPublic writes "BIND author and all-around Internet personality Paul Vixie and Mirror Image Internet have recently received US patent 6,581,090, specifically '..technology that efficiently stores and retrieves content requests and balances Web traffic between origin servers to improve performance and speed' - sounds an awful lot like what Akamai do. There's a press release from last week that gives some lovely 'details', including this little gem from CEO Alexander M. Vik: 'We anticipate that these patents and our technology solutions will encourage large groups of corporations to become customers of Mirror Image services. We also recognize that this technology is a critical component of other content delivery services and weâ(TM)ll be attempting to work cooperatively with our competitors and their customers to address this issue.' Can you say 'patent infringement suit'?"

1 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. This anti-software patent crap on here gets so old by nzyank · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Some of us, particularly those of us smart enough and opportunistic enough to actually get software patent applications submitted, believe in them (well...most of them anyways).

    I and many others busted our asses thinking of ideas and developing them and I think it's a bunch of crap that you boneheads on Slashdot think that's a bad thing. You think it's fucking easy to think of something for the first time, prove that it works, do the prior art and existing patent searches and then write up the application?

    It's a lot easier to moan about the evils of software patents than to actually *earn* one. I don't work on carburetors or maybe I'd patent some new nozzle or something. I choose to invent software things which are every bit as real to me as a more efficient carburetor is to a hardware guy. It's an invention and to my little programming mind it's a real thing.

    I've said it here before and I'll say it again. In twenty years I'll have patents on the wall with my name on them and be damn proud of them. You can print out your little anti-software patent diatribes on Slashdot and hang those up and maybe your grandkids will be as impressed with those as mine will be with my patents, but I fucking doubt it.