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McAfee Granted Firewall Patent
BadUspto writes "BetaNews reports that 'The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted software maker McAfee a patent for tracking network events on a computer using a firewall. The patent filing involves tracing the location of an incoming connection and displaying a map showing where the remote system geographically resides.' Doomsday for VisualRoute and others?"
Article text: Although McAfee has not yet said whether it will pursue licensing agreements from other software vendors, the patent is likely to put pressure on rivals such as Symantec and Zone Labs. Most firewall applications provide traceroute capabilities, with some including visual maps to aid users. In 2001, the USPTO granted McAfee an unusually broad patent regarding automatic updating and self-installation of software. At the time, McAfee said anyone "willfully flaunting the technology" would face legal action. ME: Well, even though the text says McAfee hasn't decided on going after other companies with lawsuits..err licensing agreements... they do appear to have a track record of doing so.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups. -- 0 1 My two bits
Great. I guess who were using Xtraceroute in the 90s to do this are now all SOL.
------- Code to try when you're bored: qsort( 0, UINT_MAX, sizeof( int* ), IntCompare );
USPTO shows up again! These people either are very uninformed or blind. How can they patent a thing that was used and invented a long time ago by other people. I remember I was using a visual traceroute program on win95 back in the 90's. I'm (still) proud I live in Europe, even if Romania (my country) is not yet a member of EU. I think I saw a visual traceroute program running on linux some years ago too... xtraceroute. Look on their web page here and scroll down to see when it was last modified. This gives you a clue how old the program is yet they didn't request a patent for that.
This is what I am
I can't make it stop
No matter how much I wanna change
I can't make it go away
My copy of Visual Route shows copyright span from 1996-2002 to Visual Ware.
Wouldn't that seem to be prior art for a copyright granted in 2005?
Ooooo....this reminds me of a Dateline show that I saw, where the father was trying to teach his daughter about patents. Anyways, in the end, the daughter patented the playground "swings."
No, it was swinging sideways on a swing. (Covered on Slashdot, even. Sheesh, you must be new.)
Also seen here, here, and here.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
Maybe I'm in over my head a little bit. Can someone still release an open source GPL product that does the same thing as McAfee's deal and be untouchable?
No, if this patent is upheld noone can release any similar functionality under any license for any reason. More or less.
Having said that, a patent is more or less useless until the patent owner successfully sues someone. Until a court upholds their patent it's just an assertion that's 'checked' by the USPTO. But I sure wouldn't want to be the poor bastard sued first .....
Cheers Koz
Ah, but with patents I can take your existing product (license), extend it and patent my extension. To build on top of others work and let others build on top of mine. (Sounds a bit like the GPL*)
So I buy a license for your "invention" to be used in my "invention". I then sell my "invention" to others to use.
*The fundamental difference with patents is that I am free to charge whatever I want for my extension and no body is allowed to entend your product in the same way that I have.
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
It's specific enough that I doubt there is any. Anybody know of software that traces geographically incoming connections, 'cause I don't.
You mean like XTraceRoute?
I developed an distributed advanced firewalling intrusion detection appliance, with realtime event alerting, tied to a monitored service that provided a (server side) web based report generation engine.
This commercial product was developed in August 2001, and the specific event related ip info/trace type features that exactly match this patent (minus the 'map' image) were implemented into the report generator no later then the 2nd week of January 2002, immediately put into production for all current customers to access, and specifically demonstrated to a potential customer withing days. This falls before the February 8, 2002 application date of this patent.
Anyone looking to make a formal challenge to this patent contact me. dcinege ****AT*** psychosis dot com
Not if it's not published its not.
some guy just doing something doesnt count as prior art - it has to be published.
If someone had written a HOWTO on writing a script to use XTraceRoute then that might count.
Except that a patent is not on a concept, it's on a method.
I doubt that the aforementioned script is the method used by McAffee, so not only would it not count as prior art, it also wouldnt infringe.
They engaged in what I might politely describe as highly questionable activities (questionable legally and ethically); sadly, I can't go into any details for legal reasons. Suffice to say I'll never knowlingly give them money again, and that goes for the large corporate org whose IT spend I now control. It felt like a weight had lifted from my shoulders when I left - actually one of the only times I've left a job over my personal opinion of the company.
In particular, there was a patent bounty program; everyone was encouraged to come up with new ideas for patents. There was an internal group dedicated to taking technical ideas and expressing them in the appropriate patent legalese. Many of my co-workers got fat bonuses for wondering whether (trivial, obvious idea x) had yet been patented.I guess this system is still in operation.
One thing they did do for me: a classic PHB type argued with me that Slashdot just didn't matter, no-one read or posted to it except pathetic, powerless geeks (ie., not managers - the only people who mattered to this fool.) I was so determined to get him to eat his words that I started keeping a list of posters' assertions about their backgrounds, or projects they were working on; I now have a fascinating list of hundreds of astrophysics PhDs, founders of major projects, people with interesting life experiences and.. yes... actual senior management people. Geeky execs, granted, but execs nevertheless ;)
Real y'say?
You mean, a bit like, say.... xtraceroute?
Which performs a traceroute and plots the location on a globe for each hop?