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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?"
See James Bond, Goldeneye
See, this is what patents do. They give the holder of the patent the exclusive rights to licensing of that technology.
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not going to go as far as to say that the whole system ought to be scrapped, either. There are good things and bad things about the current system, but unless we can come up with a better system that will help promote the advancement of arts and sciences without trampling on the rights of inventors and creators, this is the only system we've got.
The best thing to do would be to take a hard look at the patent system and figure out how it can be rid of the badly-working parts and how to improve the parts that work well. Then perhaps we can have a fair and equitable system of patents.
a division of IP addresses per country and each country gets it's own share of IPs?
I mean, if there is such division, distribution, assignments, etc. of ip addresses why not just poll a stinkin DNS server that knows how the IPs are distributed by country and ISP??
I read that somewhere, too lazy to look without loosing my place in the first replys for this one.
Have a good one.
===== "Every head is a different world so don't invade mine you FREAK!" smartSAGA said
The patent is doing the geographical area translation on incoming connections in the firewall software.
Stupid patent? Yes. Prior art? It's specific enough that I doubt there is any. Anybody know of software that traces geographically incoming connections, 'cause I don't.
Since when do patents include inventions? I always believed patents were describing old stuff, and are meant to provide lawyers with jobs.
Can we just have a 10 year haiatus on software patents of any kind, please? So far most of them have been single descriptor patents...
[blatently unpatentable thing] + "on the internets"
[blatently unpatentable thing] + "automagically"
[blatently unpatentable thing] + "in a browser"
And now we have
[blatently unpatentable thing] + "with a Firewall"
None of this should be patentable. New and truly novel approaches to computing issues should be, but those are exactly the types of things which are too important to patent. Where would computing be today if patents covered the concepts of Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, evolutionary algorithims, or for that matter object-oriented programming and distributed networks?
Patents were supposed to be unlikely to be duplicated. Theoretically, if I wanted to do something and I didn't know how, I would have to turn to somebody with a patent. However, these days it's impossible to blow your nose without first calling a lawyer to figure out if someone patented nose-blowing in such a way. And chances are someone has.
We should just shut software patents down for 10 years, let the technology mature, then re-examine whether they're helping or slowing us down. In 10 years time we may have exhausted enough of the obvious things that only patentable things will remain.
The ______ Agenda
You could probably program the "remotes" on the Aaphid NIDS system to do the job. There are commercial systems that certainly work like this. Judging by the descriptions given in the Internet Audit Project, some time back, the military and intelligence networks also have such systems.
Perhaps the "perfect fit" would be an active firewall/NIDS system (for you counter-intrusion) and some sort of packet analyzer and/or active scanning software to establish the identity of the real attacker.
Again, such software is certainly around and is nothing particularly new or exciting. Many of the fancier NIDS packages use Bayesian filters to look for abnormal behavior, as opposed to looking for specific attack patterns. If you want to be really fancy, you stick a honeypot in parallel with the real firewall, disguising the honeypot as a firewall in its own right. Everything that goes to it is obviously bogus traffic.
The problem with the US patent office is that they don't search for prior art. Well, they get too many patents to do that efficiently, so they trust the person filing, until someone complains. If the patent is overturned, the filer can sometimes get their money back.
Supposedly, during "patent pending", problems can be ironed out. They often aren't, because companies are loath to expose "trade secrets" or other unpublished information, and Joe Bloggs doesn't have the money or (in many cases) any standing to object. (Courts are very fussy about people having standing in a case.)
The "minimum change" solution would be for all court costs and lawyer costs to be loaned by the Government, with the loser in the case having to pay back the loan for both sides, plus interest. That way, frivolous objections would become too expensive, but so would frivolous patent claims.
As for this system - I say ignore the patent and use pre-existing solutions that do the same thing. This is a situation where "civil disobedience" is not only possible, but also low-risk. McAfee is unlikely to be vigorous in the pursuit of their IP, if it was pretty certain they'd lose any case and be humiliated.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Don't forget that software patents are very new- they've only been allowed since about 1996 or so. They don't promote innovation at all - they stifle it. They allow the one thing that's bad for consumers- limited choice and a greater potential for vendor lock-in. They make it difficult for competition, since "licensing fees" could easily result in a net loss for anyone attempting to offer products or services in the same market. Since this provides patent holders with a larger captive market (not by consumer choice, mind you), there is less incentive to invest in things that matter- like providing good customer service and a good quality product.
...between a computer and a firewall?
All hardware these days are just computers with some different peripherals and stuck in a different box.
but unless we can come up with a better system that will help promote the advancement of arts and sciences without trampling on the rights of inventors and creators, this is the only system we've got.
There is no evidence that the current system promotes the advancement of arts and sciences, or engineering for that matter.
In fact, quite to the contrary, in software, we have pretty clear indiciations that patents are not required for advancement in software, and that they may actually be harmful.
The best thing to do would be to take a hard look at the patent system and figure out how it can be rid of the badly-working parts and how to improve the parts that work well. Then perhaps we can have a fair and equitable system of patents.
We don't have unlimited time. Software patents have been around for only about a decade now and they are already causing lots of damage. The burden is on people like you to come up with a system that demonstrably works, or we really should scrap the entire system.
Granting people and companies 20 year monopolies is something extraordinary. The burden of proof that this is something we should do is on people like you who want to keep some form of the system. If you can't come up with clear and convincing evidence, we should scrap it.
Works for monsanto.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
The same problem that is readily apparent to any /.er about the USPTO exists within the
FDA, the SEC, etcetera.
The massive push to (a) de-regulate industry
and (b) fund government oversight organizations
through user fees has totally skewed the
relationship between government and industry.
More "user fees" means more money for government
agencies that they have not been getting from
the Congress. IMHO, this is also a big part of
the reason why the US government appears to
function on behalf of industry instead of its
citizens. The USA's democracy has devolved into
a "government by, of, and for the corporations"
instead of "the people".
I think it would be "Method of configuring a computer to spread viruses"
That would be "Method of configuring computers for extremely quick and reliable spread of various software without user interaction" This is a lawyer talking, remember?
Do you think data springs from the ether? The log is filled with incoming connections.
It's been a long time.
XTraceRoute is not a firewall, so is not prior art for this patent.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
The problem isn't the broken patent office, it's the broken patent system.
Morons can't screw up if you don't give them the power to screw up in the first place.
Right. If the patent simply covers making a map of IP addresses, there's prior art. If it covers the specific case of making a map of IP addresses based on firewall hits, it's not novel; it's an obvious application of existing technology.
McCrappy is really doing us a service, not that they know it. The more rediculous things whith are patented,the more obvious it becomes that the system is broken. IIRC MS patented boolean values a few months ago?
Yes, but from the way the courts work, and the way the patent office handles things, it just goes into the in hopper and will be handled in the order its postmarked as (supposedly). There is little or no attention paid to the fact that the inbox needs to be another room built onto the agency, then replaced with yet a bigger one a year later. This situation will only change when an outside authority actually surveys the situation, and orders congressional hearings to find the root cause. Even then, I have serious doubts that anything that could be considered sane will be done. I have hopes that at some point, the Supremes will get tired of all the set-aside petitions they receive, take one that looks really interesting just because the whole premise is as phony as a 3 dollar bill, and proceeds to undo the damage of the last 75 years thats been done to out patent system, and possibly even our copyright system, which is even more broken.
But that would mean you'd have to change the label I wear to "optimist", since I'm obviously very pessimistic that anything will be done in my remaining years, I'm 70 now.
Sigh, back to your regularly scheduled programming now folks, nothing to see here.
--
Cheers, Gene