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Microsoft's Patent Problem
pens writes "Microsoft suffered utter defeat at a crucial pretrial hearing in what appears to be the highest-stakes patent litigation ever--one in which a tiny company called InterTrust Technologies claims that 85% of Microsoft's entire product line infringes its digital security patents."
While it's tempting to get a laugh out of a little company handing it to Microsoft for its use of DRM technology, of all things, this is yet another B.S. piece of patent litigation. InterTrust, according to the article, is now nothing more than "a patent portfolio, 30 employees, and this lawsuit." Microsoft, like all other technology corporations, has its own bulky patent portfolio --- which is useless defense against a company that makes no use of its own patents, much less anyone else's.
It'd be funny if Microsoft used its considerable political influence to fix this patent problem, and wound up killing SCO as a side-effect. Hey, it may be cheaper than licensing DRM from InterTrust...
If they are claiming that the .NET framework somehow infringes on their patents I'd be really worried about whether those claims could be extended to Java and J2EE.
Root for MicroSoft, if we get overly broad patents taken care of, MicroSoft will have one less weapon against Linux.
At the same time, laugh at the irony
This guy is not claiming copyright infringement. Therefore he doesn't need to see the source code to determine whether or not infringement occurred. He simply needs to see a program which implements (via any source code) a technique that he's patented.
Let's use an example of what I mean. Mailblocks claim that they have a patent on an antispam technique called "Challenge/Response". Then comes along Earthlink who implements a C/R antispam option for their customers. Mailblocks sues Earthlink. Now Mailblocks hasn't seen any of the source code to the software that Earthlink uses. But they know that they have a patent on what earthlink is doing, because they can interract with it and identify whether or not Earthlink's system implements all of the claims of Mailblocks' patent. Then they file suit.
BTW, I don't particularly like the patent claim that Mailblocks is using. I think that there is a *LOT* of prior art that can be demonstrated for this particular patent. However it is useful to illustrate the point: that this guy does not need to see Microsoft's source code to claim patent infringement. He only needs to play with the software and see if it does something that he's patented.
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This is not copyright infringement, this is patent infringement.
If someone accuses you of infringing on their copyright by stealing sourcecode, you can disprove them if you show that your sourcecode bears no resemblance to theirs.
If someone accuses you of violating their patent, you must prove that your invention falls outside the scope of their patent OR that their patent is invalid due to prior art.
Therefore, your questions of how they got the code aren't terribly relevant. As for how InterTrust noticed that they were using patented techniques, well, I assume they probably keep up in the field and read some of Microsoft's whitepapers. Again, patents cover a scope of techniques, rather than an exact set of code instructions, so it's possible to gauge infringement without a sourcecode comparison in some cases.
Let's face it, this may be a 'small' company putting the boot in, but it's a 'small' company owned (mostly) by Sony. Patents still only help those with very deep warchests.
Lots of different ways to look at this case, and frankly i'm not sure exactly where my opinion on it stands just yet.
But this idea you floated about the litle guy making nothing off patents is clearly wrong. These were little guys who came up with their patents a while ago, they later sold rights to them to Sony and Phillips for 453 million dollars who are now trying to make the "big score" on their investment. If you ask me, the 453 mill "sure thing" they got was far from a pittance to a company of their size (even if Sony does make billions off it, they took a gamble with that 453 that they could have possibly lost)
If I had mod points I'd mod the parent as "insightful"... I agree strongly with the sentiment expressed therein. I would love to see Mickeysoft go down, but not at the hands of a bunch of guys with an IP portfolio. A situation like that would further engender this whole miserable environment of "intellectual property" enforcement.
The ends don't justify the means, especially in this case!
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The Intertrust patents are pretty specific. They lost their business because Microsoft used their patents and essentially gave them away for free in their products, destroying the value for Intertrust in selling their technology. Though all that remains of Interust are patents and lawyers, at one point they had almost 400 employees. 400 employees worked for several years to produce technology that was co-opted by Microsoft. All of those employees lost their jobs because Microsoft used their patents.
Though the majority here just say that 'software patents are bad' , there is some justification for patents. The main problem with software patents is the USPTO and it's inability to properly check patents; issuing overbroad patents that cover overly generic stuff.
These aren't submarine patents or anything else as Intertrust sued Microsoft shortly after talks between the two companies broke down when Microsoft was first introducing DRM into Windows Media Player.
Actually in principal the whole patent/copyright system is a mess. This is just another symptom of it. What would be nice is if Microsoft woke up to that reality and began lobbying for some changes. Certainly they have some pull in Washington...
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
It's like the end of Jurassic Park, when the kids and the scientists are all cornered by the Velociraptors, and suddenly, the T-Rex comes along, and tries to eat one of the Velociraptors, and then the other two attack the T-Rex, and the humans escape.
It's great when two evils decide to attack eachother.
This is why competition is good, and monopolies are bad.
The US Govt - by the way, has a monopoly on awarding patents.
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Couple reasons:
1. Without patents, the little guy who invents something new won't be able to compete against the big corporations who copy his idea.
2. Patents are REQUIRED to describe sufficient details so that any reasonably skilled person in the "art" (computer science, electrical engineer, etc.) can actually use the patent to build the invention. This means rather than keeping useful inventions secret, the inventor benefits for about 17 years after which the general public can benefit too by having details available.
In other words, patents CAN help the lone inventor protect his invention and it helps foster an environment where inventors are incented to SHARE details about their invention with the public.
Like anything else, there are abuses and extreme cases but it doesn't mean there are no benefits.
I agree that software patents are a pain and are unethical.
But it's interesting to note who is attacking MS here and in what context. Philips and Sony are two of the greatest consumer electronics companies on the planet. Sony is an archfoe of Microsoft since Redmond released the XBox. Several large Japanese companies recently made a lot of noise about standardizing on Linux for consumer electronics, which is pretty bad for WindowsCE. Some observers wondered if the goal of that publicity wasn't just to score a marketing point against WinCE.
So this is the next episode in this war. This patent lawsuit is a single battle in a larger fight.
Watch for more blows exchanged between MS and consumer electronics companies.
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Microsoft may now decide to harness some of its billions to lobby for laws *against* software patents.
On the other hand, they may decide that they'll need to accumulate the most massive patent portfolio in order to have ammunition if faced with something similar again.
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As one of the named inventors on a pending software patent application, I call BS on this. The patents you usually hear about, particularly on Slashdot, are bad. But that doesn't mean that "almost all" software patents are for stuff that was obvious when they were filed. In 1999, was the use of stego to encode digital watermarking information really obvious? The first academic conference on stego-related issues wasn't even created until 1996. I know some of the people who worked at Intertrust during its heyday - and they're damn smart crypto and security researchers. Look at some of the research papers from Intertrust. If you know anything about security, you'll recognize some very good computer scientists in there. Martin Abadi invented the logic used to analyze security protocols. Robert Tarjan quite literally wrote the book on advanced algorithms and data structures.
Now, contrast that with something like "a patent on the use of a web server to sell things" -- well, duh. But a patent that describes the method by which you use the high frequency components of an audio signal to digitally watermark an audio sample? It sounds kind of obvious in 2003 because that's how everyone's doing it, but the technology was quite new five years ago, and Intertrust was doing some of the preeminent research on it.
Don't blast all software patents because some are stupid. The system has a problem - a big one - but the fundamental concept of software patents isn't as silly as you might believe.