Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft, Apple Sued Over Software Update Patent
mark_wilkins writes "Microsoft and Apple have been sued by Teleshuttle Technologies, LLC, alleging that their online software updating technology infringes a patent on providing online updates to software with a menuing system to permit the user to pick the updates. Apparently the work on which the patent is based supposedly goes back to 1990."
No, but RedHat's automatic update thing at least is almost certainly in violation...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Programming Language creators should include a provision in their license that forces programmers to use the copyright system and not the patent system with programs written in their language. In addition all software patent applications should require actual working code that is complex and novel enough to actually warrant a patent for the idea itself and not just a single expression of the idea as in copyright.
In the meantime congress should simply ban new software patents until the USPTO can be fixed.
No, but it could kick the shit out of aptitude, dselect, synaptic et al; maybe even Gentoo's porthole.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
This patent has to be struck down for being overly broad. It patents the entire idea of looking at information already on the local station and then downloading new stuff from a server. Surely USENET is prior art for this even though it wasn't specifically limited to software, and didn't automatically install the software.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
IMNAL, and I don't play one on TV, but...
Actually, the filing date is April, 2000... the 1996 filing that this is a continuance of doesn't mention any of the relevant claims, aside from the selection of updates (hello, anyone remember the pre-web info-mac archives?!), so the actual claims they are saying Apple and Microsoft violated were filed after the first beta versions of their respective update technologies shipped!!!
Sounds like someone got greedy...
-- Still waiting for the Nike endorsement
This is a combined Continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/641,010, filed on Apr. 29, 1996, and entitled "COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED TRANSPORT OF ELECTRONIC INFORMATION OBJECTS," which is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/251,824, filed on May 31, 1994, and entitled "SYSTEM FOR AUTOMATIC UNATTENDED ELECTRONIC INFORMATION TRANSPORT BETWEEN A SERVER AND A CLIENT BY A VENDOR PROVIDED TRANSPORT SOFTWARE WITH A MANIFEST LIST," which as U.S. Pat. No. 5,420,820 on May 30, 1995, and U.S. application Ser. No. 08/982,157, filed on Dec. 1, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,125,388 and entitled "COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED TRANSPORT OF ELECTRONIC INFORMATION OBJECTS," which is a Continuation of the aforementioned Ser. No.08/251,724 filed May 31, 1994 (now U.S. Pat. No. 5,694,546). All of the above-identified applications are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
This "iteration" of the application was filed in 2000, but to show prior art you probably have to untangle all of that crap, and show something that existed back before May of '94.
Oh, and go fix mono, it's broken. Thx.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The dependent claims are narrower than the independent claims.
Suppose you had a patent for a hard drive, the first claim might merely state that it is a device comprised of one or more platters, one or more read/write heads, and electronic components that is used to record and read information on the platter.
Then when it goes to court because of an infringement, the court might find the first claim too broad because it might also arguably cover the old LP record players and so claim 1 would be struck out.
But if you had a dependent claim, for the sake of argument, say claim 2, that claimed the invention of claim 1 in which the platter is made of a magnetic material, then you would still have a chance. Claim 1 may be gone for being overly broad, but claim 2 would still cover the invention.
Another claim could be the device of claim 1 in which the platter is made out of paper and the read/write heads punch holes in the paper and/or read the punched holes. Yet another claim might be for the device of claim 1 with the platter made out of an optical material and the read/write heads using laser to read and write from the platter.
In other words, the independent claims are the broadest claims and the dependent claims necessarily restrict the areas covered by the independent claims. They cannot broaden the independent claims.
This also brings up an important point. You could have a patent on a device without the rights to build it if there were underlying patents on the previous devices.
Suppose I had a patent on the hard drive but with only the one independent claim of it being comprised of one or more platters and one or more read/write heads and the necessary electronics. Suppose that you saw the advantages of having the platter made out of a magnetic media and patented that.
Then assuming you couldn't get my patent overturned, since I had the patent on the hard drive, you couldn't build a hard drive using magnetic media without paying me royalties. On the other hand, while I could build hard drives with non-magnetic media, if I were to build one with magnetic media, I would infringe on your patent and would have to pay you royalties.
I thought it a bit strange to find out that you could own a patent and not have the right to build, market, or sell the device in the patent.