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Sun Files For Patent on Software Licensing Method

Posted by michael on from the deep-sigh dept.

cft_128 writes "CNet writes that Sun Microsystems President Jonathan Schwartz has filed for three new patents, one of them on the companies per-employee software pricing plan. The pricing patent application was summarized: 'Method for licensing software to an entity, including determining a per-employee cost for the software, determining a number of employees of the entity, and determining a total licensing cost using the number of employees and the per-employee cost, wherein the total licensing cost comprises a software license for all employees of the entity and all customers of the entity.' The plan was introduced last year on Sun's Java Enterprise System, charging $100 per employee. Schwartz did say that any money the patents generate will be donated to charities."

24 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. And I thought it was obscene... by SynapseLapse · · Score: 2, Insightful

    When Microsoft patented the double click. I really hope this isn't used to destroy single employee software companies.

    1. Re:And I thought it was obscene... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Firstly, I do not wish to offend anyone with this post but I have had enough of the amount of mis-information floating around the net about patents.

      Most of you guys seem to be peddling the tired old mantra of 'all patents are bad! grab your pitchforks and burn all patent attornies at the stake!'. How much do any of you guys really know anything about the patent system and how it works? By reading these posts, it seems that very few of you seem to have real life experience with patents at all. Instead all most of you seem to know is the hysteria that the mass media, Slashdot included, feed to you about how patents will be the end of the world.

      I agree that the patent system is old and outdated. I agree that software patents are entirely inappropriate due to the frequency of independent reinvention (which should raise the bar for obviousness and novelty to a very very very high level). In fact, I believe software patents are the wrong way to go as they only stifle creativity and invention in the industry. They should be abolished just like patenting a literary construct, a musical cadence, or a work of art is not allowed.

      I do not, however, believe that obviously trivial patents such as the Microsoft double click patent and the Sun per-employee patent are relevant to anyone. These patents are obviously invalid due to mountains of prior art. Should Sun or Microsoft attempt to sue someone for patent infringement, the defendent can literally take a laptop to court loaded with any program that exhibits double clicking or per-employee billing that was dated before the patents filing date. With double clicking and per-employee billing, there are hundred of examples of such programs. And then, the case will be thrown out of the court. The patent will be nullified and cancelled. It is that simple. And the only negative effect to all of this is that Sun and Microsoft have wasted money getting such a useless patent filed.

      To preempt the obvious replies :

      - NO, Microsoft and Sun cannot magically 'bog you down with their legal team forever until you pay up'! With such an obviously invalid patent, the case is so ridiculously clean cut it will never ever stand up in court, even if they had a thousand lawyers trying to figure out a loophole.

      - "Why have such patents been granted at all? This is a collosial failing of the patent office! Burn it down!" - I agree, except for the arson part. But the point is, IT DOESN'T MATTER! Patents, like laws, are not set in stone. The validity of patents is, and always has been, decided in the courts. If the patent office has stuffed up, it will be straightened out the moment someone tries to enforce their patent. And as mentioned above many times, trivially incorrect patents will be deemed void by the courts. No refund given to the companies that have spent money filing the obviously incorrect patent.
      I mean, the patent office is not perfect as the people inside are not perfect. Can YOU say that you have never made a single mistake at work before?

      Again my purpose is not to offend but merely to attempt to clarify what I think is a tendency to focus on the wrong issues with patenting, and to clear up some of the mis-information about patents. The hysteria the mass media like to whip up about trivial patents is entirely the wrong focus. It is not because of these patents that software patents should be abolished. It is geninue software patents that actually have substance and novelty that really damage the industry. It is these patents that are harmful, because with such patents there actually IS room for argument in court, and the litigation fees could destroy a small company. It is these 'good' patents that will destroy software, and the reason software patents should be abolished. THE TRIVIAL PATENTS ARE IRRELEVANT AND ARE NOT THE REAL ISSUE HERE!

      Let the flames begin...

    2. Re:And I thought it was obscene... by tsm_sf · · Score: 3, Insightful

      - NO, Microsoft and Sun cannot magically 'bog you down with their legal team forever until you pay up'! With such an obviously invalid patent, the case is so ridiculously clean cut it will never ever stand up in court, even if they had a thousand lawyers trying to figure out a loophole.

      I think any prudent business owner would be wise to get a lawyer if MS or Sun or anyone came after them. This would cost money that a small business might not be able to afford. The implied threat of these lawsuits would be enough to keep a small developer far away from the broad area staked out in the patent.

      --
      Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
    3. Re:And I thought it was obscene... by John+Miles · · Score: 2, Insightful

      THE TRIVIAL PATENTS ARE IRRELEVANT AND ARE NOT THE REAL ISSUE HERE!

      OK, we have one AC's opinion. Now, let's find someone from Barnes & Noble and ask them if they agree.

      --
      Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
    4. Re:And I thought it was obscene... by imkonen · · Score: 2, Insightful
      No, I don't think you really preemted the obvious replies. In short:

      If stupid patents can just be thrown out the instant someone challenges them, why is it the fights we hear about always seem to drag on. I agree it should be reasonably cheap for another big company to fight such a ridiculous patent, but that's not enough. It shouldn't be cheap. It should free, and it should cost the defendant no time at all. Otherwise it still disproportionately favors big business over small.

      If trivially stupid patents don't matter, why are the big guys in such an arms race to collect them? From the article:

      "I think that IBM in particular, and Microsoft increasingly, have incredible patent arsenals. Sun needs some protections, too," Governor said.
      This sure doesn't sound like Sun isn't worried about M$'s patent on double-click...it'll get tossed as soon as M$ tries to enforce it. This sounds like Sun is trying to say...okay M$ if you try to charge us for double-clicking, you don't get to sell per-employee site licenses anymore.

      And finally...sure the patent office is allowed a few mistakes. But your attitude seems to be don't worry if the patent office is too liberal, that's what the courts are for. No the courts are not there to do the patent office's job for it, and it's fairly clear that a judge's time is more valuable than a patent clerk's.

    5. Re:And I thought it was obscene... by lightknight · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Wrong.

      "It shouldn't be cheap. It should free, and it should cost the defendant no time at all. Otherwise it still disproportionately favors big business over small."

      And what if the positions are reversed? What if a small company wants to spank a large company? If you want to drag MS into this, they rip off everyone. Try to take them to court, and now they get a free defense? WTF? Bill Gates thanks you.

      "But your attitude seems to be don't worry if the patent office is too liberal, that's what the courts are for. No the courts are not there to do the patent office's job for it, and it's fairly clear that a judge's time is more valuable than a patent clerk's."

      Hindsight is 20/20. No one can predict how a company/inventor may enforce their patent(s), nor can the USPTO track down every single piece of prior art out there. Their job is simply to do the best they can, given the circumstances (sleeping, eating, having a life). And, like the law of averages (where 50% of all people have below average intelligence), so too will the patent office always come under fire, no matter how tight their standards are.

      --
      I am John Hurt.
  2. Bleh by mfh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah who would have thought Sun would change their behaviour after that famous settlement? I mean this patent reads like, "we are going to calculate how to make lots of money and double it by preventing others from doing the same".

    Schwartz did say that any money the patents generate will be donated to charities.

    Yeah, sure. What percentage? There is absolutely no way to qualify that shit, so I don't buy it. Business plays the charity card when they know the public image will take a hit from a particular action. The Cnet title reads "Sun's Schwartz guns for patent glories", not Sun donates 100% of patent earnings to Cancer cure or anything like that.

    --
    The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
  3. Sigh :~ by Greger47 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I dont know what saddens me most, that they have the balls to submit an application for something so old and obvious like per employee pricing, or the fact that it actually has a pretty good chanse of beeing granted...

    /greger

    1. Re:Sigh :~ by Halo1 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Maybe not so obvious
      Who cares about obviousness here? The problem here is not in the first place novelty or obviousness, but subject matter. Why on earth should one be allowed to patent a licensing method? What's in that for the economy as a whole? Are companies not going to create new licensing methods if they can't "protect their investments" in "inventing" new licensing methods?

      How far are we still away from patents on investment methods, savings formulas of banks, etc? Patents were never intended for things like this. Not everything you do has to be monopolisable. A monopoly per definition has negative effects, so it's only justifiable to voluntarily give one if the positive effects of what you ask in exchange outweigh it.

      There is not even a hint of proof they do so in case of patents like this one.

      --
      Donate free food here
    2. Re:Sigh :~ by Halo1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't think that will happen any time soon, because the lawyers won't shoot themselves in their feet. Generally they argue for patents on everything and anything, but you don't hear them arguing for patents on legal strategies, argumentation tactics or juri observation methods. In fact, they publish a lot about court cases, analysing them to the bone and sharing their experiences with colleagues.

      For some reason, they understand that in their own profession they have nothing to gain from monopolising general methods, but they generally seem to assume it's necessary everywhere else.

      --
      Donate free food here
    3. Re:Sigh :~ by Tim+C · · Score: 2, Insightful

      For some reason, they understand that in their own profession they have nothing to gain from monopolising general methods, but they generally seem to assume it's necessary everywhere else.

      The lawyers argue for what they're told to argue for. Someone high enough up in a company says "argue for X", they do it - that's their job. So, the CEO says "defend our patent on $obviousThing", they do it. That doesn't mean that they agree with it, or think that patenting everything in sight is a good idea (other than that that's what everyone else is doing, so it's a good defence). Or do you really think that it's the lawyers telling the commpanies what to patent?

      --
      It's official. Most of you are morons.
  4. Another retarded patent by betelgeuse68 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I don't care if it is coming from Sun.

  5. This is getting more ridiculous by the minute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does anybody else have the feeling that just when you read a story about a patent claim that is so absurd that you can hardly believe anyone would come up with it, let alone grant the patent and you think that it simply can't get any worse one of our beloved IT companies comes up with a patent claim that is even more ridiculous?

    How on earth the EU can contemplate bringing this braindead patent system to Europe is beyond me.

  6. Patent "sharing" with M$???? by mabhatter654 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    unfortunately, don't they have a shiny new cross license agreement with MS? so this is entirely useless against the ONE company that's trying to ram per cpu/per user/per conection/per application/per "window" program fees up our collective arses!!!

    In other words they're patenting it FOR MS to use, not to prevent MS from using it!!!!

  7. Charities?!? by ultrabot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Schwartz did say that any money the patents generate will be donated to charities.

    Of course the money coming from licensing the patents doesn't matter - it's the chilling/killing effect it has on competitions that makes it sweet.

    MSFT could as well give all the patent revenue money to charities - hell, they could burn the money. The money from patents is peanuts, as long as it keeps the other guy down.

    --
    Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
  8. Obviousness by bfree · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Has the test of obviousness just been forgotten? I don't know which is worse either, the per user licensing or using "extra" faces on 3d representations of 2d objects to provide additional interfaces.

    Seeing as though Sun are saying they will donate any proceeds to charity makes me wonder if this is in fact a deliberate attempt to attack existing patent database and in particular the US PTO's ability to grant patents. Could they really seriously think these can fly?

    Prior art anyone? I know I've seen software sold on the basis of the number of people, and surely some of the previous 3d desktop efforts have done something like the notetaking example given for the 3d patent I mentioned above?

    --

    Never underestimate the dark side of the Source

  9. Selling software is no different by Sylvius · · Score: 2, Insightful

    from selling anything else. For millenia, when you went to the market and bought a bunch of the same thing, the vendor would charge per item. Why is software any different? How is charging a company a per employee fee for software any different from the per employee fee the company pays for health insurance, catered food at a meeting, desks, etc? If the patent office is going to treat software as a product and treat each copy of the software as a unique, saleable item, then they need to compare software patents with any other item.

  10. Re:Patenting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You mean; A method of subverting the USTPO whereby the patent system designed to spur innovation is co-opted by a handful of established corporations to prevent competition from innovative upstarts and retain their profitablity now they feel threatened?

  11. WTF by Y-Crate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It seems Sun is attempting to patent multiplication.

    u * p = c

    U = # of users

    P = Price per user

    C = Cost

    It should be noted that a variation on this formula can also break any form of encryption on the net. :)

  12. Re:Better than "CPU" licencing by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Don't forget the other possibilities:
    • additional $10 per KByte CPU cache (sum over all levels)
    • additional $1 per MByte RAM
    • additional $5 per GByte HD space (doubled if on RAID)
    • additional $1 per Mbps LAN transfer rate (sum over all installed network cards)
    • and, of course, limited number of updates (you can buy additional update licenses, of course, for $100/update)
    I think i should patent those :-)
    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  13. Fight this! by segmond · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Schwartz did say that any money the patents generate will be donated to charities."

    So what? If we support them even if all money goes to open/free software projects. What's bound to happen is that after they have established from various cases that the patent is valid. Management will one day say, "Fuck It, time to make some profit!" In the world of business, everything that is said means nothing unless it is written and signed! With that said, Let's fight this, it's utter ridiculous and at the same time disgusting to patent ideas on licensing.

    --
    ------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
  14. MSDNAA...? Prior Art? by graznar · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I hope they know this is the same scheme that the Microsoft Academic Alliance uses...

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    [ check out my ruby book @ http://ww
  15. who is this aimed at? by zogger · · Score: 2, Insightful

    looks to me it's aimed at suse/novell and redhat, and IBM for that matter. Anyone who's a customer of theirs care to comment? How are they priced now, what formula? Would this patent apply to their way of offering for-lease software?

  16. Re:Patenting... by brianosaurus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, except maybe for RedHat, Novell, or any other commercial entity that sells an "enterprise" edition...

    Isn't this kind of like basic accounting? I haven't bothered to read the article (IHBTRTFA?) but this is absolutely insane.

    "determining a number of employees of the entity, and determining a total licensing cost using the number of employees and the per-employee cost"

    Uh... You mean Counting and Multiplication? I'm pretty sure I learned prior art in the first grade. Surely someone at the USPTO has completed elementary school, or at least seen Sesame Street?

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    blog