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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.
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/
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.
$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?
yea, but the wayback machine has nocat.net back to 4/01. downloads included. whether the 'technology' covered by the patent is there or not is something i didn't check. i wonder if discussion about doing something like that is elsewhere on the site (and if discussion would count as prior art)
vodka, straight up, thank you!
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...
I remember back in 2000 I was in Malaysia and a hotel there had the wired version... i.e. plug in computer, try to surf anywhere or pop email from anywhere and you get redirected to a page to agree to pay 20RM for a day's access, charged to your room.
The system was done by an Australian Company iirc.
(And hence probably dated from prior to 2000)
You could use usb or ethernet for that one. Adding wireless as another option is clearly trivial! Perhaps that company is the one with the original patent?
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)
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.
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).
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.
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 *
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