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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. ;-)"
It's official. There is no God, the madness will never end. Kill me now.
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."
I think it's time for someone to file a patent on Earth, Fire, and Water. ;-)
Wind is already patented?
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
...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 :)
I'm sure they are just trying to cash in on the fact that IE will automatically try to download the Flash plugin.
Any of you readers who live in europe should be writing letters or whatever else is necessary to get your local media in some way to report this and other stories like this.
You need for the Great Washed, the computer-uninformed persons of europe, to become aware that if software patents go forward in Europe, this is the sort of thing you have to look forward to.
They need to understand that software patents will not help the innovators. They will simply mean that by some kind of strange lottery system, the first person to successfully get through a bs application describing something that is already an obvious, common practice will suddenly "own" that practice.
They need to understand that software patents help nobody who actually makes a profit, and will only help vultures like this Austin company who have never made a product anyone noticed; at the one end, it causes the small companies to do a strange dance around concepts that they thought of but turned out to already be patented; at the other end, it causes the large companies to obsessively spend time, money, and effort tossing all their obvious ideas they can think of at the patent system in hopes that enough of them will be granted they can generate a strong "patent shield".
-- Super Ugly Ultraman
BookmarkSync, which has recently gone open source. This does exactly what they're talking about in the patent, the preferences here being bookmarks, of course, and this was being done well before the 2001 application date of the patent.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
With your powers combined, I am Captain Patent!!
Insert clever one liner here.
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.This patent specifically covers using the World Wide Web to update a computer; it does not cover all possible ways to update software via the Internet (the web is just the subset of the internet that uses HTTP and HTML). Thus, if you perform automatic updates without using HTTP or HTML (say, XML and SCP), this patent does not affect you. In essence, this patent is easy to work around, so it should have much of a long-term effect on the world as we know it.
I suspect the only reason this patent was issued was due to this specific nature of the claims; however, in the short-run this pattent still might cause some big headaches if the lawyers get really over eager (which always seems to happen...)
There aren't any claims about installing software or software updates. Perhaps a case could be made that an online software installation/update system that copies a computer's configuration from the computer to a remote system via the Internet could be infringing, but as far as I can tell software installers/updaters simply send an installer program that examines what's on the computer, then requests the appropriate files from the remote server. And it seems to me that that's how it should be done, anyway.
Nonetheless, this still does not seem like anything particularly novel. The idea of maintaining a database of settings is certainly nothing new. Making that database accessible over the Internet doesn't seem like a particularly significant improvement. In fact, what is (critically) missing is automation. The claims that are made in the patent specifically call for the intervention of a technician in the process, to interpret the settings reported from the remote database. Regardless of the novelty of the idea, it doesn't seem to be as broadly applicable as the title of the
And it seems that if anybody wants to look at an existing system that might infringe, Red Hat's RHN system may be just the thing. But I think that it's been around since well before 2002.
-h-
well, we're gonna have a hard time /.ing you if you don't give us your IP...
:)
Very nice pun, in a story about patents
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
If you don't care about internet software updating and maintaning that has a database, you don't care about this. That would mean you don't have a system like apt, up2date, ports or any other software version atomation on any of your computers. If that's the case, Slashdot does not have much to offer you and you should point your licensed copy of IE someplace else. If you care about free software, stupid software patents bother you because that's how propriatory software makers intend to kill their competition.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
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."
I'm not so sure this is a problem. The patent mentions that data has to be encrypted when transmitted (presumably with SSL) and that the data has to be stored in a relational database.
MS primarily keeps data in config files (.inf, etc.). The old Windows update just used data out of these files with the ActiveSetup control to update components. I actually haven't checked into the "new" one (the one that was released with XP).
Of course, if they broaden the scope of "relational database" to start covering filesystems and loosely-related sectioned files like INF files, then, yes, I suppose they're screwed...
...except prior art exists. Then again, when has that stopped the USPTO from being utter morons with a bad business model?