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."

Comments

Nothing new

[ravenspear]

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.

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a good point. If this continues and starts to ramp up, it's really going to make software development and deployment completely infeasible. It will inevitably piss off enough corporations that something will happen.

Re:Nothing new

[suckmysav]

"If this continues and starts to ramp up, it's really going to make software development and deployment completely infeasible. It will inevitably piss off enough corporations that something will happen."

Actually, the really big corporations like this sort of patent fiasco. In fact they were the ones who lobbied for it in the first place.

Big companies can afford to lodge thousands and thousands of patents every year, small ones can't. From the perspective of the three or four major incumbants in the IT industry (Microsoft, Cisco, IBM) this becomes the corporate equivalent of the nuclear arms race. They all hold thousands of patents which they can use to smackdown any small startups that come along and they all have an unwritten agreement that they won't use their patents against each other, because they know that their opponent will countersue them using their own patent portfolio.

It backfires on them occasionally when a small startup patents an idea and it gets under the radar but usually all they have to do then is buy out the startup and they are back to square one.

The primary use of software patents is the suppression of new players in the market place, and you will note that the three big players in the patent arena do not directly compete with one another, they may have some small product overlaps at best.

Suing is a new business model

[erick99]

This guy must be a ton of fun at children's parties....

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.

Is this patentable?

[darnok]

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?

Protection racket under a new name?

[erick99]

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.

Nice price

[k98sven]

$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?

Easy to Disprove

[b0lt]

Easy to disprove. Just give the dated source, with CVS log. NoCatAuth existed far before the claimed date.

Re:Maybe this isn't so bad

[rainman_bc]

This sucks because it's a guilty-until-proven-innocent measure.

It's the same as having a license plate on your car. Imagine the amount of hit and runs if you were anonymous when you drive your car?

At least we can track down kiddie porn assholes with measures like this.

Re:Nice price(Solution? Class action lawsuit)

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Clearly Unjust

[Simon G Best]

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!