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Software Installation/Update via Internet Patented
RKBA writes "My wife just handed me an article from the Wednesday, October 22, 2003 issue of the Wall Street Journal about a tiny Austin, TX company called Bluecurrent that has been awarded patent No. 6,636,857 covering the Internet installation of any software or settings on new computers. The patent was granted by the USPTO on October 21, 2003. It will be interesting to see if it can be enforced. I think it's time for someone to file a patent on Earth, Fire, and Water. ;-)"
According to the WSJ article, They have already found a law firm willing to pursue the claim for a contingency fee.
"Mr. Thomas said Bluecurrent intends to seek royalties of $10 to $25 for each time a new computer has software or other settings updated over the Web."
NO! This is *not* a patent "covering the Internet installation of any software or settings on new computers".
This is a patent covering backing up preferences on a remote server so that someone can safely upgrade their OS or move computers.
To recap:
I wish /.ers would check their facts before screaming how the sky is going to fall on our heads every time the USPTO grants a patent.
foo mane padme hum
Mainframes.
(And please don't tell me this applies "originally" to the World Wide Web... if that matters I'm applying for a patent to do the exact same thing "for IP block 90.x.x.x".)
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
...but here's a link to a relevant article.
I hope someone counter-sues them into the dust!
evil adrian
It looks like this is a bit more specific than the original post would lead one to believe. It does not cover installing software remotely. This patent is more about saving a user's settings remotely, then transferring them to a new computer. Looks like it is a way to facilitate the use of a remote IT staff. It does not look like it covers downloading software install packs, nor does it seem to cover software updates. But hey, IANAL :)
Read the actual text
It repeatedly refers to using the "world wide web" to do its magic.
As most slashdot geeks know, the internet is far, far more than the world wide web. The web is a small subset of the internet.
So do everything outlined in the patent, just use ftp, ssh, NFS or samba.
I think the lawyer/patent agent who wrote this thing needs a cluestick.
Too bad for the company.
Now, in my opinion, the actual patent is also ridiculous and way too broad in scope, but not nearly as bad as the picture painted by /.
The scary part of this patent isn't the user settings stuff, it's this claim:
This seems to cover cases where every computer on a network (say in a corporate IT environment) uploads a bit of information about itself to a server, and then someone prepares a report based on that information. But there must be prior art on this one. And it would be pretty easy to get around this claim anyway -- just poll the machines for information rather than having them upload it to a central server.Roaming profiles seem to be prior art for this one !. Also what about likes of NortonsGhost or Veritas and the myriad of backup systems that save user data to network for bare-metal recoveries. Puting magic words of world wide web just means using http to transfer files: nothing new and done many time before. Bluecurrent probaly can't believe their luck in getting this patent. User settings saved on a network so that you can re-use these when you re-install on another machine (asset) ! Shit, I would never have thought of doing that ! No my first thought when I re-install my PCs is to copy my files from my local hard disk to my local hard disk; you know, the one I'm about to format/junk/rebuild !. Doh !.
WebMachines "iaNetwork" used to support remote storage and management of user preferences, so you could log into any machine managed by iaNetwork and see your data the way you liked. It handled remote updates, individual user preferences, devive settings, etc. See this link, courtesy of the WayBack Machine for a look at the (sadly, defunct) WebMachines iaNetwork. The iaNetwork "Identity Server" and iaNetwork "Device Server" seem most relevant to the patent in question.
My own web site is prior art to claim 25 of this patent. Here's how access to a web site running on Apache HTTP Server goes:
25. A method for asset management using the World Wide Web, comprising: accessing the World Wide Web through a series of computer-related hardware devices connected to a network;
People visit the web site, looking for a recently released open-source NES game.
transferring information regarding each computer-related hardware device in said series of computer-related hardware devices to a remote storage medium;
Web browsers send User-agent: HTTP headers to the web site whenever pulling a file.
compiling information related to said series of computer-related hardware devices derived from said information residing on said remote storage medium;
Apache collects User-agent: information in a log file.
and preparing and disseminating reports compiled from said information.
The web site uses Webalizer to produce reports from the server logs, and the webmaster digests the reports into posts on the site's news page.
Will I retire or break 10K?
(1) What about thin clients? They store all settings on a server so that you can sit at any terminal you want and get your desktop. Unix has been capable of this since way before 1994 (which was when I first used Unix at university).
(2) At the school I went to they even did the same thing with the Windows 3.1 machines. Because they couldn't secure the installations, the machines were re-imaged every time they rebooted. When you logged out, your files were written to your network drive and the entire machine erased. I'm fairly sure that Windows has been capable of doing something like this (syncing with a network drive) without any extra software since Windows 95.
(3) The book "The Diamond Age" by Neil Stephenson describes a similar process whereby user settings were stored on a server (YT's mom in her federal job whereby the earliest arrivals sit at a computer close the front of the room - those who are late sit at the shameful back).
(4) Microsoft Hotmail has an Outlook Express interface that works over port 80 using web services to access and read your mail. Any changes you make to your mail files locally is then mirrored on the remote Hotmail server.
You only need to substitute "world wide web" in the patents text with "LAN" or "WAN" (which is essentially the same damn thing - it's just a protocol over TCP/IP) to get a good description of 1, 2 or 3. Item 4 covers web-based access over port 80 - which, really could be applied to anything.
With these sort of patents being filed (and approved) - the patent office should be shut down permanently. It has lost it's original purpose of protecting the truly original thinkers amid a sea of pathetic scam artists and lawyers who have never done a day's real work in their lives.
I've used the product in question on a contract a little while ago. It's great for taking an entire office, upgrading all their computers to newer models.. and retaining all the personal settings from the account/profile.
Claim 18 is just wrong.
I can see now why Patent Lawyers get paid the big bucks. Though they obviously still can't afford proofreaders.
1. The patent only covers anything that does everything in the claim, just like it says. It cannot be generalized. If you don't do all of the steps, you don't infringe.
2. Claims are often narrowed by stuff you don't see in the patent itself, but which are contained in the file wrapper, that is, the documents exchanged by the applicant (or applicant's attorneys) and the patent office. These documents must be obtained from the patent office, and are often very revealing. Typically every patent gets rejected in the first instance, on grounds of insufficient novelty, and will be appealed by the applicant saying "...but we only intended application in this narrow set of circumstances, which are different from the prior art...". All those documents are recorded and form part of the validity of the patent. They are admissible in court. It usually turns out that patents are much narrower than a reading of the patent alone implies.
Read the claim carefully. It applies only to "web" transfers, and you must upload from an existing computer and download to a "new" computer. I'd be willing to bet that there are specific circumstances contained in the file wrapper also.
I don't think this is very alarming, in summary. It's probably a much narrower patent than it first appears. Really, this kind of thing happens all the time and it isn't a big deal. Move along, nothing to see here.
Krill
I used to work for BlueCurrent. They used to be called Lincoln Financial. Their business was refurbishing and reselling companies' old PCs and laptops. As I was leaving the company, I think they were getting some sort of contract with Dell to do warranty service for them. I have no idea where this patent would fit into their business model unless they have made some significant changes in the last 4 years or so.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Wrong. Since very few slashdot readers can be bothered to actually read the patent before complaining about it, it covers this process:
This little game of outright lying about the content of a patent and then joining in a chorus of ignorant bleating about the awful, awful patent system accomplishes nothing. I hope that no legislator or decision-maker ever reads this drivel, as he'll be convinced that patent reform is championed only by cretins.
The abstract neither broadens nor limits the scope of claims of a patent. By regulation, it "will not be used for interpreting the scope of the claims."
The claim is the thing, and must be read carefully in view of the specification and prosecution history.
Whoever decided to let this go through as a valid ./ article is a moron and didn't read the link in the posting. The article is about a backup/restore procedure using the internet to access the storage medium. This has nothing to do with updates.
;)
I wasted 5 minutes on this because I deal with this kind of tech at my company... geez..
"In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are not."