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Wi-Fi Redirect Gateway Patent for Hotspots
Glenn Fleishman writes "Over at WiFiNetNews.com, we just broke the story that Nomadix was issued a patent covering hotspot gateway page redirection. Nomadix makes hardware and software for the hotspot industry, and this patent would cover redirection used by community networking portals (like NoCat), sponsored free networks (like NewburyOpen.Net), and fee networks (like Wayport, T-Mobile HotSpot, and Cometa). It's unclear what terms Nomadix wants for a license, but this patent seems to take a standard way of doing business and put it under fee -- although Nomadix may have been the first firm to employ this method for proxy URL redirection."
Funny you should mention that. I'm an employee of a state system of higher education (I leave figuring out which one as an exercise for the reader). Several of the schools that I deal with in the system are using Bluesocket boxes which would almost certainly be considered infringing devices. It will be interesting to see if Nomadix only approaches other vendors, or if they use the SCO tactic and go straight to consumers.
Yeah, we discussed doing exactly that here several years ago, for those users whose systems didn't have their MAC addresses properly registered in our systems database.
If only I had realized we had a non-obvious, patentable idea that we could claim over everyone in the country, we'd be rich.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
The US Patent Office is just busy ensuring the future of America. When the rest of the world wakes up they'll face a bright new day of technological serfdom. Patents are the new chains of the third world.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
If you provide wireless over a large area, you don't mind perhaps putting up small signs to advertise that it's available in this area, but you don't want to have to put all the instructions, terms of use, etc up there. That's a lot of text.
We aren't talking about businesses who's employees all already know this stuff. We're talking about universities, hotspots in hotels and airports, etc. Public hotspots, where users have to read a terms of use agreement and instructions before continuing, and who may not be the least bit familiar with the necessary steps.
A lot of these sorts of people do this now. I can't remember where I got the idea for this myself, but I doubt I read it off of their patent application.
Sadly, once a patent is gotten, it tends to take a life of it's own because of investor pressures. Patents do not help the honest littel inventor in the back yard (99% of the time) - I wish we could just get rid of them.
Yet, patents are something we just can't get rid of. Think of the medicine industry. To get a new drug, they have to do lots of research and testing... and sometimes the tests end in a failure which means all the money spent on the project is lost, it's a dud. When a working pill is invented, it might take only pennies to make the actual pill, but the research company has got to be paid for its effort. That's where the patent protection comes in, it allows the company to charge an inflated price for a specified number of years in order to recoop that investment... after which time the buzzer sounds and the generics rush in and the price plumets to be in line with the cost of the pill itself and not the discovery of the pill.
How long that protection lasts, and what's enough of an advance to qualify for protection are both points for debate, but we can't exactly throw out patents all together if we want research to go forward...
Well, for the last four years I've had a squid proxy set up that required the users to authenticate before they were allowed access to the internet... and it did it long before I ever needed it.
From the article this looks to be what they patented.
The only difference is how the authentication tokens get into the database... and any system architect worth a damn could solve that problem if faced with it.
I'd say that there is prior art... and, that anyone versed in the art could come up with the solution...
Either of these facts alone is supposed to be enough to reject a patent.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX