Slashdot Mirror
Transparent Web Caching Patented
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'?"
This is starting to get out of hand!
I dont live in US(god bless that nation), but I am afraid that these "IP properties" enforcements is going to far. I use the term "IP properties in general though I shouldn't, but you know what I mean. Will patents and court decision made in US affect me in europe? Will I have to move to some obscure island where no enforcment of US interests exist?
I commented before about not trusting Vixie very much due to some of the things he has done in recent years, and he proves me right.
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Makes MAPS a pay service after orbs (their biggest competitor at the time) closes up shop.
Creates the "members-only" only bind list which deals with bind related security problems.
(http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01
I don't know if maybe he is pissed off since he isn't thought of as a god or what, but turning internet community related items into pay services isn't a way to become the net got.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
if they move all their assets to India or other low-cost countries
Isn't the only added value of Akamai that their servers are always close to you? Moving to India wouldn't do them any good. They'd still need servers in the US.
This is completely pointless. Simply by making the software available, you can claim prior art, which invalidates any patents filed later by third parties on the same technology. Similarly, if the software source has been made public, it can't be patented anyway by anyone.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
'We anticipate that these patents and our technology solutions will encourage large groups of corporations to become customers of Mirror Image services'
It's the technology that should be getting the customers, not the patents, it's this kind of attitude (we're using patents to encourage customers - read FUD) that leads to forgetting why patents are there, to allow you to enjoy the benefit of the attractiveness of your INVENTION, not the attractiveness of your patent
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
I'm not sure what the poster meant by "sounds like what Akamai do", but Akamai is far from a "transparent cache proxy". Anyone who has used Akamai for more than 2 minutes would realize this. The only things Akamai might do that could be somehow linked to the patent is that Akamai is a cache that distributes data regionally. It's not transparent and it's not terribly easy to use for the we developer, either.
Kris
Kriston
First he takes over maintenance of BIND, then proceeds to blackmail his "customers" into paying him to be told about the copious amount of security problems, essentially capitalizing on the work of others.
Then he had BIND 9 written, which has nothing to do with BIND. We call it BIND then? Again, to capitalize on the work of others (not that the BIND name is something to carry proudly).
Now he patents what Linux could do at least since 2.0 (1996) with a patched squid 1 (been there, done that). Granted, his patent appears to be earlier than Akamai (1998) but Digital Island may have been early enough to invalidate the patent. They were bought by Cable and Wireless a while ago.
Their patent claims read like a first-pass analysis of the caching-load balancing problem.
To my mind, this sort of thing should not be patentable - it is merely a problem analysis, not an innovative solution.
Most competent people who understood networks and the issues behind content provision would have come up with a similar, if not identical solution.
This could have been failed on the 'non-obvious' requirement, but hasn't been.
It seems that the technical abilities of the patenting authorities are not of a level to deal with patent applications such as this one competently (or indeed in a timely fashion, if it was filed in 1996).
The best solution for everyone (except greedy patent factories such as this example) is to outlaw the patenting of software and software designs. There's plenty of copyright law out there to protect the code you write, and if it's not the best code at the most appropriate price, then you'll fail in the market and too bad.
If on the other hand you have a true innovation in your field, you'll have a good 12 months to build the initial market before the competition comes to play.
If America really is true to the principles of the Founders, it's time that the politicians looked at this issue and came up with a solution to stamp on parasitical patents such as this. Even if unsuccessful in their aims of extracting money, the costs to others in the field of dealing with the attentions of these people is a disruption to trade, and needs to be eliminated.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!