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

Possible loop-hole?

[powerpuffgirls]

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?

Re:Possible loop-hole?

[mattdm]

Actually, that's a really good loophole. Because: what is "expected to be obtained" by the user machine? If the clearly displayed policy of the network or hotspot or university or whatever is to reroute all unknown requestees to an authentication page, that's actually _exactly_ the content an unauthneticated user would expect to get -- and thus not covered.

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

[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.

Re:Nothing new

[Flyboy Connor]

They all have an unwritten agreement that they won't use their patents against each other

Not unwritten. It is called cross-licensing. Basically, they allow each other unlimited, royalty-free access to all their patents.

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.

No, it backfires when a litigation company, consisting only of lawyers, acquires a patent they violate. They cannot offer cross-licensing, because the litigation company does not need any patents since it doesn't produce anything. It is only interested in money. And it doesn't want just a tip, usually it goes for something like 10% of the profits.

The rest of your text is accurate.

Maybe this isn't so bad

[Phil Karn]

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.

Re:Maybe this isn't so bad

[sploo22]

How so? I don't see why having to register to access a free hotspot is so horrible. If you have to provide a valid email address, it provides at least a minimum amount of accountability in case the service is abused. And it really doesn't cost you any more than 5 minutes.

I think this is just another example of people feeling entitled to the unlimited charity of others.

Re:Maybe this isn't so bad

[Phil Karn]

You misunderstand me. I wasn't objecting to having to register to use somebody else's hotspot. That's fair enough. I only object to the kludge "taught" (that's a patent term) by this particular set of patents. It's an ugly hack, a violation of the end-to-end principle, and a terrible abuse of the Internet protocols akin to Verisign's deservedly maligned Site Finder "service". It's bad for almost the exact same reasons that Site Finder is bad. Its only saving grace is that it only afflicts the users of a given wireless service and not the whole Internet.

What if my web browser is configured to use a proxy? What if my home page requires SSL? (Both are true for me). What if my browser doesn't properly implement caching, so the login pages come back up after I have already signed in? And suppose I don't even want to use the web, but just fetch mail or run an rsync command. I happen to be knowledgeable enough about this particular hack to manually disable my proxy and surf to a non-SSL webpage to get properly redirected, but what about your average non-technical user?

That's why I say it wouldn't be such a bad thing if these patents steered public IP wireless providers away from implementing this particular brain-dead hack and towards an authentication mechanism designed specifically for the job. 802.1x is the obvious alternative, but it's not the only one. IANA could reserve an IP anycast address and associated domain name specifically for authenticating yourself to a public wireless network with a standard web browser. Because you're not hijacking a request to some other web object, many of the architectural problems mentioned earlier disappear. If you know you'll use such a network, you just create a bookmark for that special domain name and put it in your browser's list of sites not to be reached through your proxy. Simple and clean, even if it still requires a web browser.

Re:Wow...Just wow.

[powerpuffgirls]

Maybe Microsoft will patent its Blue Screen Of Death interface, so nobody else can display an error on screen without a license. I'm sure MS has prior art to that :)

Patent Prerequisites

[XsynackX]

Isn't one of the prerequisites for a patent that the new idea must be "non-obvious to someone in the industry" or something to that effect?

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?

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?

Re:Is this patentable?

[T-Ranger]

Holy crap. Its true!

#6,329,919 : System and method for providing reservations for restroom use

Slightly more complex then one would first think. The system can grant reservations based on some critera, for example (I am not making this up) if the requestee is a first class passanger or not.

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.

I've been collecting fees like this for ages

[JudgeFurious]

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.

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?

PHOSITA is dead!

[jonathan_95060]

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...

Prior art in Whistle InterJet

[tlambert]

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)