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Another Hotspot Redirect Patent Collection Attempt
Glenn Fleishman writes "Acacia Technologies is turning its sights from collecting streaming media patent fees to Wi-Fi hotspot gateway redirection, we report at Wi-Fi Networking News. The company acquired a patent that they say covers the use of technology that redirects a login attempt by an unauthenticated user to a login gateway page. They want a minimum of $1,000 per quarter in royalties. Nomadix already claims a patent on this, while we quote an early Wayport executive who says that Wayport has prior art on it. Will community hotspots using NoCatAuth fall under this patent-enforcement attempt? Too early to tell."
The rerouted IP address provides content to the user machine in which at least a majority of the content is different from that expected to be obtained by the user machine
How about showing the requested page as is (for example google.com goes to google's homepage) but with a DHTML overlay or framing to indicate this is the only page to go until the user's properly authenticated?
Patent law with respect to software will ultimately be reformed when a lot more sticky situations like this are created and people get so fed up with the whole thing that they say fuck it and decide to disregard all software patents.
Seriously, There patening a script that is used already by other projects. What's next? companies are going to patent an access is denied pages for failed logins?
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In the end we are ALL disconnected....
Maybe this isn't so bad after all. One of the few pluses to patents is the way they sometimes keep people from using really bad ideas that they should be prevented from using. This is a good example.
they'll copyright, what comes out of your butt soon!
I mean, come on, this patent is on something so ridiculously simple and obvious, how could it even have been approved in the first place?
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I'm not a vegan because I love animals, I'm a vegan because I hate plants!
Hell, we have a perl script http://sourceforge.net/projects/netreg/ that does that on our network - will they be comming after us next?
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
We have $30 million in the bank and we have the resources to enforce the patent as necessary," Berman said.
"Those who license earlier on get the best deals," Berman said.
"The user has recurring revenue, the manufacturer is a one-time sale," said Berman. (cacia chose to approach operators that use products that do redirect rather than offering licenses to manufacturers because it can potentially earn more money from operators.)
It's all perfectly legal. And it is so much easier to buy patents and sue people than to take, oh, say, $30,000,000 and innovate.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Surely this is implementation of a business process (i.e. a means of verifying user identity before allowing access) rather than some great breakthrough in software . If so, doesn't that mean it isn't patentable by anyone?
Especially when you get two packets in the mail from two companies, both claiming to own this "redirect" patent. What do you do? I can't see people writing two checks. Acacia Technologies and Nomadix are both going to take everyone to court? This reminds me of the protection rackets from the early 1900's - you could end up paying multiple parties. In this case, the protection money/royalties, keep you out of court.
http://www.busyweather.com/
Based on their patent, could they? Does your script do what they claim is covered by their patent?
A few years back I got a patent on a device for providing light and heat to a small space by means of the ignition of methane gas directed from the posterior of a human being.
Ok it was stupid but I maintain that it's only marginally more stupid than the patent these morons have and only slightly less likely to survive a challenge.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
The patent is dated May 1, 2001. The earliest download I can find for NoCatAuth is dated July 12, 2001. I so believe this patent.
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
They will now.
$1,000 a quarter totals $80,000 for 20 years, the duration of any patent.
That is presumably far less than patent litigation would cost to defend yourself against that patent.
So, regardless if the patent is valid or not, you're better off paying up.
Wonderful system, eh?
However, I believe it was written earlier at Carnegie Mellon or some other university before being sourceforged.
We didn't write it, we are just using it.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Easy to disprove. Just give the dated source, with CVS log. NoCatAuth existed far before the claimed date.
got sig?
for a good laugh visit my girlfriend, PHOSITA . Can anyone tell me when the USPTO killed PHOSITA? Was it when software patents were admitted? Technically Phosita is still on the books but we all know that she is dead...
imagine if every company who was affected by this pooled their resources into fighting this. It would probably save them all alot of money, and discourage other attempts to extort money, But what am I thinking it's probably illegal.
Class action would be a way.
However, I can imagine it'd be difficult. They can go after people one at a time. Once you've signed a license agreement, there's no getting your money back.
How do you prove fraud when they can say "Well, the US Patent Office granted our patent. We can't be liable for acting as though it was valid."?
And they'd have a good point too.. It's the responsibility of the USPTO not to grant invalid patents.
Its hard to blame a company for trying to cash in on their patent, even if its not a real invention.
There is prior art in the forced proxy authentication in the Whistle InterJet, circa 1997/1998, prior to the purchase of the company by IBM.
-- Terry (former Whistle Communications and IBM employee)
Southwestern's NetReg system was presented at multiple academic conferences in 1999 but the earliest references I found were in June - if they can prove it was in production in January it might be useful: http://southwestern.edu/ITS/netreg/
How about ending the patentability of improving on original ideas. That would basically end the practice of patenting a "Method for using standard ip protocols and authentication systems to do XXXXX in order to make money."
NO MORE BUSINESS MODEL PATENTS. A patent should have to be an actual invention that works.
The patent covers a system that changes the destination field the packet. What if your system doesn't do that. I use NoCat on FreeBSD and the rule the does the "redirection" does it with IPFW fwd, man ipfw(8), which does not modify the packet in any way, specifically modifying the destination field. It seems to me that such a system is not covered by the claims of this patent. By the way, I got one of this "Licensing Materials" packets today. So nice of them to provide such a nicely arranged extortion note.
And when it does, my patent on Bullshit(tm) will come into effect.
:)
Mr Burns voice:
Will the general consumer and hobbyist care if some company they've never heard of say they can't do this? Linux isn't burning down due to SCO, neither will stuff like NoCatAuth.
Don't expect T-Mobile and other companies that do this to take this lieing down. Hopefully they'll jack up their prices so more fight it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Class action would be a way.
Class action doesn't work that way.
What you can do, though, when a company has a patent and is threatening to sue people is file a lawsuit seeing declaratory judgement. You're basically asking a court (it can still be a jury trial) to declare that you do not violate the patent. One outcome of this could be invalidating the patent.
It would be perfectly acceptable in this circumstance for a large number of small businesses to join as plaintiffs in this type of action.
Of course the downside of doing this is that you might lose. But I suppose that's no worse than just paying up for licenses (other than that you'd have to cough up some lawyers fees)
It's the responsibility of the USPTO not to grant invalid patents.
It would be nice if it worked that way, but it would be very inefficient to run such a system. A perfectly run USPTO would result in much fewer lawsuits, saving some money. But it would either make it prohibitively expensive to get a patent (thereby eliminating everyone except large corporations from getting one) or it would have to be paid for with taxes (everyone's favorite topic). The system we have now, with some tweaks, is a good compromise.
I know Colubris makes some Wi-Fi access points that redirect unauthenticated traffic to another site for login.
This document seems to suggest that they have been in production at least since 2000, which is earlier than the patent date (2001).
I was setting up a WAP at home and wanted users to get a warning page before they started using it to access the internet, so I went online to search for a solution and found NoCatAuth. I wasn't aware of any solutions which existed to provide the functionality but it seems like an obvious solution and was sure someone had come up with something like it.
I can see how some software/technology patents might be truly innovative, but if in order to protect those really unique groundbreaking ideas we have to allow patents like this to slip through I believe the cost to society is simply to high to justify the protection of those ideas which are actually innovative.
Pardon, couldn't resist - I'm watching Austin Powers on TV...
Seriously, the place I'm working with has been doing that since 1996.
Oh well, what the hell...
"Its hard to blame a company for trying to cash in on their patent, even if its not a real invention."
Perhaps a solution to this problem is to award damages against the claiment to an amount that is double what was being claimed (plus costs) if a bodgy patent doesn't hold water in court.
It would make the companies who decide to sue all and sundry for patent violations think long and hard about the validity of their patent and it would give the company being sued an incentive to actually fight it in court instead of just rolling over because it is the cheapest option.
"You can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
Nuff sed.
Oh well, what the hell...
How many companies have patented the same thing, possibly within the same time frame. Would it go far to show how terribly broken the patent system is if 10+ companies all turn out to have the exact same dumb patent, and then have to bicker over whose is valid?
Anyone moderating "Redundant" might want to follow the link I posted where they would learn that the Southwestern netreg is different than the CMU netreg.
With all the patent fiascos including microsoft, wi-fi,etc., it seems that we will have companies that simply make a profit by patenting obscure things that are already on the market, and then charging royalties for using them!
"The system we have now [...] is a good compromise."
Riiiiiiiiight! PO gets its fees, approves the patent with obviously no work done, and lets everyone else pay for the cleanup of the mess they created in the courts, washing their hands of it.
If all you want to do is control access to your wifi hostpot generally, then all you have to do is control access based on the SOURCE address, not the DESTINATION address.... In other words, ALL communication from an unknown MAC address is redirected to an authentication server, period. Once a machine is authenticated, then you can allow access generally.
This would, I think get around this patent. It's also the way that I would tend to approach this whole problem anyways. I haven't seen the other patent (yet), so I have no idea if this idea infringes on that one.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
This sort of targetting of software users (the users in this case being Wi-Fi hotspot providers) is clearly unjust. It is one of the worst things about software patents.
A computer user, who needs a solution to a problem, chooses to use a particular solution that's published, in software-form, by someone else. Isn't that one of the most basic things about software? Isn't that one of the most wonderful things about computers? Surely!
But then, supposedly in the interests of encouraging and supporting innovation, we have to consider the issue of patents. Might that user, in using that piece of software, be infringing some other person's patent? Yes, they might. And who would be liable? The user, or the provider of the software?
It should not and must not be the provider of the software, as that would mean that the patent would itself be an infringement of the software provider's right to freedom of expression. (After all, it is utterly fundamental to what software is that software is a form of expression.)
But that leaves the user being the supposed infringer. Does that make sense? Is that reasonable? Is that fair? Is that just? Surely not!
Freedom of expression includes the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas expressed in software form.
Given that we now have at least two companies which have submitted substantially similar applications within a year of each other, it might be a pretty good sign that the only thing not obvious to most developers is the idea patenting something so stupidly obvious.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
If that were true then Sun wouldn't be able to patent a software licensing method.
Keith D.
The USPTO's mission is to promote industrial and technological progress in the United States and strengthen the economy. In my opinion, too many patents halt progress.
I thought patents were supposed to be non obvious.
If I need a way to authenticate someone on a gateway I redirect them to the login page. This is pretty much the most obvious approach to the problem.
Patented they say.
* spits in disgust *
Still we need a new model for hotspots.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
The patent system the big companies built up pivots vitally uppon the presupposition that they will be fighting other big companies. The game requires that the big players hold out the little players completely while going into their own Deadlock ("Deadly Embrace" etc) to steal a computer term, with their acknowledged rivals. The Big X companies depend on being able to cross licence amidst themselves.
This falls apart completely in the face of an "IP Holding Company."
When you face a company that has patents on what you want to do, but has absolutely no need for the patents that you have to offer them back, then you are hoist by your own pitard.
In the many decades before the ninties, getting a patent meant something. You had to build something tangable and so you had to have paid up but good to get your patent. You had to be somebody before you could be a patented somebody.
But with software patents all you have to be is a bullshit artist with $400 bucks and a lawyer.
So there is springing up today a cotage industry of holding companies with "intellectual property" who will undermine the great companies in exactly the way that long-range high-powered cannon made the castle pointlessly expensive.
Actually a better analogy would be sappers. Little companies that burrow under the edges of a largs companies' development and product infrastructure and "go off". They either get crushed or they breach the wall and take a good bit of loot away with them.
And just like the lords of yore, the big companies will fight back for a while by trying to build bigger walls by strengthening the patent process. But it needs must fail, because the new rules of engagement say that walls don't work.
*Eventually* some company, some really big company (are you listeneing IBM? Sun? Microsoft?), is going to get smart and figure out that software patents have turned the basalt under their walls to sandstone. They will put together their lobying groups and try to remove the software patents.
They'll be dumb about it, of course, and try to preserve the patents they already have (those things were expensive after all) and they will make the second-tier mess.
Finally the whole thing will eventually go the way of the Perpetual Motion Machine, and all the patents will be vacated en-masse.
The most critical factor in the timing is whether our "organs of state" will be able to successfully "infect" Europe with the STD that is "business process (software) patents."
If errope falls it will add twenty years to the timeline and both the US and the EU will become the software and information systems third-world behind Asia and "the southern continents".
If the EU is smart enough as a political organisim, only the US will have to sink to third-world status on the internet to find the motivation to undo its mess. That should only take about fifteen to twenty years if things remain as they are today.
Between here and there we should expect the North American DRM Cabal will make our lives quite ugly here.
I for one don't welcome our new ??AA overlords, but I know them to be an enevitable "quaint feature" of the twenty-tens...
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Actually right now there is a guy in australia who hold the patent on two different ways to swing on a swing. He used the express method and it got by the reviewers appearantly.
(B) diverting the Internet browser of the computer, or similar program of the computer used to access and navigate the Internet, away from the site the user intended to view, to one or more other Web pages, such that the user is prevented from viewing the content at the intended Web page;
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Could I patent this process as a business model? Get some money, buy a few trivial patents, and sue anyone who tries to use anything vaguely resembling what I have patented.
Oh, wait prior art, never mind.
It would be nice if it worked that way, but it would be very inefficient to run such a system. A perfectly run USPTO would result in much fewer lawsuits, saving some money. But it would either make it prohibitively expensive to get a patent (thereby eliminating everyone except large corporations from getting one) or it would have to be paid for with taxes (everyone's favorite topic).
Well.. I have the impression that the European Patent Office does a better job than the USPTO at this. Yet European Patents aren't prohibitively expensive, nore is the EPO tax-financed.
So obviously, there is room for improvement.
Wikipedia had this on their front page today. The test is that the invention could not be invented by a "Person having ordinary skill in the art". Which is essentially what you said.
Well.. I have the impression that the European Patent Office does a better job than the USPTO at this. Yet European Patents aren't prohibitively expensive, nore is the EPO tax-financed.
I would argue that the vast majority of problem patents in the US are software patents. The EPO doesn't allow those.....yet. So it's not really apples to apples.
The Canadian company I work for now has been doing this redirection thing (in the same industry as the original patent holder LodgeNet) for 7 years.
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I believe that we went through the "proof of prior art" business with the Nomadix patent already this year, it appears we'll have to do it again.
The problem of course is that it's expensive and onerous to file with the USPTO, so we've limited ourselves to "go away and leave our customers alone" discussions with them.
Yeah, the system is broken
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
Has anyone patented "detour" road signs and the methods of redirecting road traffic? If no, and you're thinking "DUH" right now, then why would this be allowed as a software patent?
Anybody know if such a site exists? It sure would be nice to know not to buy products from Company X because they're a bunch of litigious wankers.
My personality is like a coupon, it's 10% off.
patent collection attempt.
What the hell is wrong with the system and these skimmers? How many years have we seen redirects, and not these people want to apply a simple, age-old redirect routine to the environment of "hot spot"!
The web is the web, and even on a client-server machine, a failed log in attempt takes the user to a warning or admonition or information page.
If this application is awarded a patent status, it will yet again underscore the need to force a revamp and rebuild of the USPTO.
BIG Companies applying for patents should be FORCED to run and to pay for (non-tax-deductable!)ads in many papers, including in the tech mags/rags to guarantee MAXIMUM exposure attempt at bringing the application to light. By the time it's scurried like a cockroach into the dark crevices of the USPTO, it's often TOO LATE for an RFC. In fact, there should be a PUBLIC RFC database JUST FOR patents.
Small companies or smart individuals with no income, no warchest, no backers and certainly not corrupt patent-scooping portfolio builders should have low-cost access to accelerate their opportunities to fend off and prevail against some of these megalomaniacal pricks that do nothing more than amass "treasures" to obstruct clear, predicatable, inevitable, or necessarily non-patentable processes or ideas.
JEEZUS! Give decent inventors or implementors a BREAK!
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
...Why less and less people respect copyright these days. With people patenting, and copyrighting everything under the sun is it really any wonder why people don't give two shits about infringement? Hackers rule.
Acacia Research first came out with Round One of their Patent Licensing schemes with the V-Chip patent.
They managed to convince TV manufacturing companies to the tune of $25M to license their patent. It wasn't until Sony decided to battle them in court, and won, that the V-Chip patent licensing spree came to an end. While the V-Chip patent has since expired (and defeated by Sony with a non-infringement verdict), Acacia is still appealing for prior infringements on other TV manufactuers.
Round 2 is going on right now with the DMT patent that claims the ownership to downloading of audio/video from the web. The bogusness of this patent is being tracked (along with other patent abuse cases) at my website of http://www.FightThePatent.com
The DMT Patent suffered a big loss due to the Markman Order, where the judge found many of the claims to be indefinite, and suggested to the current adult entertainment defendants to file for summmary judgement (more info on the website).
Round 3 is now with this hotspot patent that was purchased from Lodgenet (one of Acacia's early DMT licensees - do unto others as they have done to you).
The tactics used to solicit liceneses in DMT patent look to be the same as with this one. Talking about how they have $30M in the bank to litigate, etc.
The HotSpot patent is not as broadly targetted as the DMT patent, where the patent infringement is on a much fewer set of companies.
While this HotSpot patent does not affect most internet users, it does burden the companies that we might use, that are claimed to be infringing.
Your prior art posts and finds will be greatly appreciated by the companies who have to face the decision of fighting the patent or paying the license.
If the patent claims are bogus, in that there is prior art, then this Round 3 patent is another example of patent abuse, taken on by a company that has demonstrated consistent tactics of wielding an interpretted patent to intimidate businesses to cave.
------ Fight The Patent! website
Does NTL's technique for doing this on broadband users count? They do exactly the same thing - but on a wired broadband connection rather than a wireless one. Take out the transport layer, and its identical. You get the authentication page if your MAC address is not recognised.
We now have at least two patent applications and one academic papers (or is that two?) on this idea independantly developed (as far as I can see) in the same calendar year. And a commercial implementation at the beginning of the next year.
If that's not a sign that the idea is pretty obvious, I don't know what is. -- that's where my sarcasm kicked in....
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
All the stupid idiots that never should have been allowed to program in the first place, but which flocked to the easy money in droves and are now out of work have lowered the level of the "person of ordinary skill in the art" of software to that of a rhesus monkey.
Of course no new software inventions are regarded as "obvious".
I just wanted to say that I think the patent is valid. When I invented this, I looked all over the place for a way to do it, and there was nothing out there.