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Microsoft Patents 'Phone-Home' Failure Reporting
theodp writes "On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded a patent to Microsoft for its Method and system for reporting a program failure, although a much more sophisticated version of this technology has been standard on IBM mainframes for years. Maybe prior art searches will improve once the USPTO moves into the new two million square foot USPTO campus, which includes five interconnected buildings, a twelve-story atrium, a landscaped two-acre park, and a museum."
I'm sorry, ET; I'm afraid we can't allow you to send that signal... Microsoft, you know...
By awarding obvious and unoriginal patents, the USPTO's plan was to amass a ton of money so they can have wasteful, luxurious campuses...
Next we'll be reading about how each patent clerk gets his own stripper and lapdances are mandatory every hour on the hour.
Method and system for reporting a program failure
They patented the BSOD?
My guess is the museum will hold long gone stuff like "search for previous art".
Black holes are where God divided by zero
A bit from the abstract: Method and system for reporting program failures. The system extracts information about a failure in a program module, such as the location of the failure, and establishes communication with a repository, such as a server.
Don't you just love how vague this is? It could cover almost anything, including embedded things like elevators, automated ovens and whatnot...
OK, I didn't read the whole thing, but the abstract just goes to show how little is needed these days to patent software. Argh.
.: Max Romantschuk
Wasn't Netscape's talk back feature available in 1996 when Netscape Communicator 4.0 came out? That was certainly a "phone home problems" system, though you had to enable it first. I haven't seen much difference, from my perspective, between what Windows 2000/XP has and what Talk Back does.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Netscape has done this for years.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
It's called the Big Blue Screen of Death, right?
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
With Norton products scheduled for product activation starting with Antivirus 2004, I wonder if Mircosoft considers phone home technology part of their greater product activation scheme. It would be amusing watching Symantic and Mircosoft battle it out. :)
However, we all know that Microsoft has no need for error reporting software.
We had a little seminar on patent system and patents in general at our company. As such, I asked some questions about software patents and these seemingly trivial patents like "one-click shopping". The guy responded that even though the Patent Office may grant the patent, all patents have (IIRC) 9 month period when others can comment on it and have it taken down if they have sufficient basis (such as prior art). Even after the period, they can still be taken down with a court ruling, but then the process is of course more expensive.
He mentioned that most of the more controversial ones, including the one-click shopping, have been contested and thrown away a long time ago. Can someone confirm this?
I'm not sure whether I should have believed everything, (mostly I think they were trying to goad the developers into thinking that software patents that were-soon-to-be reality here in Europe are a good thing), but just my two cents..
- 13. The method of claim 12, wherein the new entry comprises the location of the location of the failure.
errmmmm/ damn. I think MS is trying a buffer overflow on my brain
yes, we have no bananas
Neither IBM's method nor Netscape's method were able to diagnose the failure and point the user to a fix.
This feature is clearly specified in the patent, which the moderator obviously didn't read before making his comment about IBM's prior art.
So this patent is perfectly valid, as no other bug reporting system known currently has this capability.
The patent seems to indicate that Microsoft is focusing on improving the reliability of its software through analysis of failures in the wild.
Now, I don't know about you, but I find that a pretty bad way to go about improving your software. "Yeah it's buggy now, but allow us to analyse the gazillion crashes and we'll be able to reduce them to just a few hundred thousand."
Microsoft patents this, and thereby makes sure that no-one else gets to use this way of working (because we all know how happy Microsoft is about granting licenses to competitors). That's a GOOD THING. Competitors will be forced to use methods like improving the quality of the software through design, not PRODUCING buggy software in the first place, instead of pissing your users off by not only crashing software, but sending a bunch of data across your network, potentially complaining about not having an active connection, and opening up all kinds of exploits by triggering faults deliberately etc. etc.
Despite the best efforts of software developers, software programs inevitably fail at one time or another. One type of failure is a crash. A crash occurs while a program module is running and results in the suspension of operation of the program module. Crashes are frustrating to users and, in some cases, may cause the user to lose work.
oh my god!
isn't it supposed to be a feature??
*cough*netscape feedback agent*cough*
Patents are not about who is right, or who is first; patents are about who will sue.
The US PTO is a money-making service for the government, and this fact is why it operates as it does.
There is a misconception that it is the central duty of the PTO to form a blockade against granting patents. The PTO can and will block applications where there's heavy similarity with prior art or existing patents, but that's really just a guideline to using the service, not the core function.
The meager regulatory behavior also weakens further in tough economies, because Big Business believes that having patents, even if they are untenable, will generate revenue; the administrations can open the floodgates at will.
The PTO's purpose is to grant patents for a fee, and it's wholly suited to do so.
The application vetting process of the PTO is a cost center for the operation of the PTO. This is akin to saying that customer service is a cost center for the operation of AT&T. It is required, but they'll cut costs as much as they can get away with.
To fix the patent application vetting process, two things must happen:
As of 15 March 2001, the USPTO has changed their policies to solve that second problem. They can now publish patent applications before the patent itself is awarded to the applicant. Third parties may now submit "helpful" arguments against controversial applications. The USPTO can then weigh obviousness against challenges without incurring the costs of doing all the searching themselves.
Breaking patents by finding simple prior art is not enough for most cases. Patents already granted are almost never cracked, certainly not by someone using an independent third party's prior art. In the famous Heinlein/Waterbed case, the patent was denied before it was ever granted by the Patent Office. Once a patent has been granted, the Patent Office rarely will get involved in disputes; that is a matter for the courts.
[/RANT]
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In 1984 our Stratus 200 fault-tolerant 'minicomputer' (68010-based) would let you yank a running CPU, and it would phone home to Stratus, they'd check the system info reported and if needed run remote diagnostics, and the phone would ring and they'd tell you to put the CPU back in (oh, and the system wouldn't even slow down).
Haven't read the patent, but sounds like prior art to me.
No, that they copyrighted.
Therefore, according to the DMCA, you should either sit there and wait for the Ashcroft SS to burst through your door, or cut a deal with the BSA in which you agree to pay $50 for every page on which you've ever read those words.
Damn, I quoted you. Forgive me, Ashcroft, for I have sinned ... it has been $150 since my last copyright violation ...
John
I meant, produce enough prior art that the PO didn't find that shows that Microsoft's solution is not unique? Or if it is unique, ammend the patent such that it is less sweeping?
Blar.
I know for a fact that on the pSeries (Unix) and zSeries (Mainframe), the system includes a separate service processor that does just exactly that. So even if there is some sort of catastrophic failure of the main system, the service processor sees it, phones IBM, and their service guy shows up in an hour with the exact part that needs to be replaced. I think I would call this prior art.
"So this patent is perfectly valid"
There's no such thing as a valid software patent.
What most of you snot-nosed kids don't realize is that before the 90's, there was *no such thing* as software patents.
And despite this, lets look at what was invented:
Mainframes
PC's
The Internet (yes!)
Client/Server
Web Browsers
Routers
programming languages
Holy cow, why would people invent all this software if there was no patent?
Since we've had software patents, we've invented...uh.... Well, One click shopping and Microsoft Phone home.
I'll let the reader decide which is a better environment for innovation .
I found this document about MS Patents.
Anyway, I didn't read the patent yet, but does it have something to do with reducing the annoyance of phoning home everytime one of their shit products fails?
Now that would be spectacular, and something worth patenting.
We don't use windows on servers anymore...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
And did anyone notice the references... that REFERENCE the IBM patents from 1983 that are used on the mainframes. Microsoft have "refined" the IBM patent and thus created their own patent that refers to but is not identical to the IBM one.
So who ever made the IBM mainframe comment didn't get very far in reviewing the application... its the first bloody reference on the page.
IBM already hold the base patent here, so the objective here is to avoid being sued by IBM by getting your own patent. The real question is what is new here.
And this
16. The system of claim 15, wherein the repository is a remote server and wherein the failure reporting executable communicates with the remote server using a web browser program module residing on the user's computer.
Could be it. IBM don't specify a web browser. But is this REALLY enough for a brand new patent ?
And should everyone be paying cash to IBM to do this anyway ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Is there a USPTO mailing list for new patent application review (better yet for software patent review) prior to the granting? I would love to get on that list.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Yeah, sure.
The patent includes a list of the prior art which was considered by the examiner during prosecution.
Here is the list from the patent:
U.S. Patent Documents 5193178 Mar., 1993 Chillarege et al. 714/25
5790780 Aug., 1998 Brichta et al. 714/46
5928369 Jul., 1999 Keyser et al. 714/47
5944839 Aug., 1999 Isenberg 714/26
5948112 Sep., 1999 Shimada et al. 714/16
5974568 Oct., 1999 McQueen 714/38
6029258 Feb., 2000 Ahmad 714/46
6357019 Mar., 2002 Blaisdell et al. 714/38
6381711 Apr., 2002 Chiang et al. 714/48
6412082 Jun., 2002 Matsuura 714/38
Just 10 prior art documents. All US patents.
Often, when only US patent documents are cited, it is the examiner who has done the searching.
What probably happened here is the attorneys at Merchant & Gould filed an application with even broader claims and NO prior art. The examiner searched the original claims and found enough prior art for a rejection. After some amendments (and some more searching) the examiner could no longer quickly find material on which to base her rejection and she was BY LAW obligated to issue the patent.
I would challenge the validity of this patent simply by the appearance of a lack of disclosure from Microsoft. There is not one technical journal, not one product description, no one non-US patent document cited by the world's largest software company considered to be "material" to the examination of this application. This is on its face not credible.
Examiners usually do a pretty good job when they have the most relevant prior art in front of them. Lack of prior art for software at the USPTO is one of the principal problems facing the USPTO.
When the world's largest software company apparently does NOTHING to aid and assist the government's examination of its applications for patent, this is not good faith. This is abuse.
On September 24, the European Parliament gave its initial approval to a 'Directive' on the 'Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions'. Before it did, however, it threw in loads of amendments, some of which were aimed at stopping these US practice of patenting 'business methods and software'. You can read more on e4engineering here.
Gnome, and Gnome based, apps have been doing this when they crash for quite some time now. They offer the enduser the choice of submitting the PR for the crash (which can be either local, or remote, depending on installation configuration), or checking out the gnomeapp crash page (which, again, can be local or remote, depending on the config).
I've often wondered just who Microsoft is copy-catting for this.....
Sometimes people just have to learn and adapt to change, it is one of the requirements of being a living thing.
This patent only covers a system where the client reports failures, checks to see if the failure is a duplicate, then follows server-based instructions to see if someone at Microsoft want's the user's bank account information before sending it.
The specific innovation in this patent is that after the client "phones home", the server can request additional data. I didn't see that in a cursory scan of the linked IBM paper.
As usual, slashdot is making a patent sound broader than it is.
In other news, after the release of Windows XP service pack 947, Microsoft has suffered a complete DDOS attack as every Windows XP based computer in the world tried submitting a bug report at the same time.
This is not the sig line you are looking for... -- Old Jedi Sig Line Trick
Haven't Netscape and Real Player been done this for several years now?
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS