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'?"

Comments

squid

[Unominous Coward]

This better not affect squid.

If it does, I can see a number of ISPs going belly up due to the increased cost of traffic.

Re:squid

[Zeinfeld]

I strongly suspect that this was actually a defensive patent filing. Of course such filings frequently fall into the wrong hands. I suspect that the real issue here would be interference between the mirror image patent and the Akamai patents. Both are in my view unenforceable, both because of prior art and in the case of the Akamai patents failure to disclose relevant information.

Yet again we see the old patent lawyer trick of stating large amounts of prior art in the description then making claims that dircetly cover the prior art. Essentially the inventive step here is claiming ownership of all possible embodiments of an idea that have not already been invented - the fact that the contributions of the inventor are miniscule not being considered relevant in the corrupt USPTO system.

If this would affect squid, it would be a very strong case of prior art.

There are much earlier examples of prior art. Tim Berners-Lee described the basic concept of Web caches in his CHEP/Annecy address in 1992. CERN distributed a caching Web proxy in 1993, the HTTP specifications were extensively adapted in 1995 to support cache use with input from Jeff Moghul and Jim Gettys. People can also find W3C notes that were published arround that time that describe extended cache architectures by Phill Hallam-Baker. This was the original purpose of the W3C log format.

The Akamai scheme is also compromised by prior art. The W3C deployed a system for serving web pages from multiple servers in 1995. Requests from Europe went to the French server, first at CERN, then Inria. This is a particularly important piece of prior art since I told the alleged inventor about it and it was in any case operating out of the same floor as one of the alleged inventors. Rohit Khare and myself had extensive discussions concerning the alleged invention but we are not listed as inventors, another probloem for the Akamai patent.

Looking at the later claims some would appear to be pe-empted by the Open-Market patent application several years earlier, this was an EU patent filing that was hastily withdrawn after a ton of prior art was dumped on the applicants.

The idea of transparent web caching is not new either. TIS created a transparent Web proxy sometime before 1998, the concept of web proxies and web caches have always been closely related. The combination is both obvious and covered by prior art.

Also there are extensive discussions on the HTTP WG mailoing list and the www-talk list before that on the topic of transparent caches. These are generally considered a bad thing.

What should happen here is prosecution of the USPTO under RICO. Their activities resemble a protection racket more closely with every corrupt patent they issue.

GPL'd patents

[Anonymous Coward]

What we need is people to allow their patented software to be used royalty-free in GPL'd software. This way, they would still get royalties from commercial vendors (which they should) without hurting open source. It seems like this would be a perfect candidate.

The EFF should patent stuff

[brunes69]

If we want to fight this patent battle the solution is not to sit back, wait until a patent comees out, then bitch about it. We need to be pro-active.

The EFF and/or the FSF should be actively going out and patenting every software idea that comes out of free software under the sun. They could then just release the patents with some kind of liberal license, with a revocation clause.

This would give you two things... it would supposedly prevent other companies from patenting the same thing, and it would also give us a portfolio a-la IBM to use as defense... as in if these guys try to sue squid, the EFF comes in and says "well we have a patent on using the color red on menus... so if you sue squid we will revoke your patent license and sue you!" Stupid example but you get the idea.

Re:The EFF should patent stuff

[femto]

There is no need for EFF/FSF to patent stuff.

Instead, EVERYONE should be writing 'Free' patents on every idea under the sun and publishing them far and wide. Once it is published, it's prior art. Surely 100,000 geeks can match a bunch of lawyers? We have the advantage that we don't have to pay for 'free patents' and there is no red tape.

Maybe EFF/FSF's contribution can be to set up a wiki which can be used to make a permanant, easily searchable, record of all these ideas?

I guess such a scheme addresses the 'prevention aspect' but doesn't address the 'bargaining' aspect.

If a patent is only gong to be used as a bargaining chip, it probably doesn't have to be particlarly strong, so it might be possible to D.I.Y. and eliminate legal fees. That way, it might be affordable to patent some of the 'better' ideas.

Evidence of transparent caching from August 1996

[lifegonehazy]

This is the earliest reference to transparent caching that I could find in the squid-users archive.