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Symantec Patents Multiple File Area Virus Scanning
DigitumDei writes "Symantec announced on Wednesday that it has aquired a new patent (United States Patent - 6,851,057) titled "Data driven detection of viruses". Symantec has declined to comment on whether it will pursue litigation. Symantec's director of intellectual property Michael Schallop stated : 'We don't generally discuss how we will leverage this patent against competitors or others,'." From the article: "[The patent] could refer to any technology that allows antivirus researchers or antivirus products to use scripting to determine, dynamically, where in a file to scan and detect threats. It could also include the use of Javascript or other common scripting languages to direct antivirus scanning..."
The U.S. is granting too many patents for too broad of topics. It's coming to a point where even new things can't be created simply because a patent exists that, not only covers part of the new invention, but the entire GENRE of the invention.
They need to reform the patent law before it gets even more out of hand than it already is... Up next: a patent for "any process whereas pages of paper are bound together.."
It is not the responsibility of the Federal Government to
A)Protect your business model.
B)Ensure you can "pay back your investors for a long shot" This patent is bullshit, it's like EA, just eliminate all competition, then what incentive is there to change or improve? None, slap 2006 on it and ship it. I want a patent on "Exchanging Oxygen for Carbon Dioxide utilizing organic muscle structures", and sue everyone who breathes.
I hate sigs.
Why do American corproate idiots insist on saying 'leverage' when they mean 'use'? It sounds so lame.
""Data driven detection of viruses". "
how else are you going to detect them?
Now that Microsoft is getting into the anti-virus biz and presumably shipping it with the OS, Symantec knows its days are numbered.
People set up dummy companies for tax purposes already. What's to stop them from doing the same for patent purposes?
Talk about unenforceable laws..
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
Patents encourage innovation in a quite simple and straightforward manner, by providing financial incentive to innovate. If you invent something, you can exclusively profit from it for a period of time. Otherwise, those with more marketing power (or anyone capable of making a ripoff of your software/device/drug/&c.) can flood the market with copies of your invention, in which case you make no money and you and your family die of starvation. Dead inventors stifle innovation.
"Finding out whether a file is infected by a virus is a case of looking at the file and seeing if that virus signature is present in the file. This is likely to be done by a program as its easier. These chunks of virus code will live in different places dependent on the type of file being effected. This is all obvious. Surely this patent isn't worth a damn as it can be challenged as such."
Not quite. They are not patenting the idea of the anti-virus. They are patenting the idea of an anti-virus written in an interpreted language. From the patent: "The [interpreter] provides a Turing-equivalent programmable system which has all of the power of a program written in a more familiar language..."
However, that is prefectly obvious too. I'd even go further to say there is no "invention" in this patent at all.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
Lets say I create a few seperate systems, one scans a stream of data for a match say a header on a tape.
I'll call this grep --file
another system finds blocks of data 'signatures' that I want to match.
I'll call this grep -o
A third lists all the files on my filing system.
I'll call this file.
So, symantic has patented a system where grep --file , grep -o and file cannot be used together if your looking for virus signatures.
(maybe with a little winedump and gzip thrown in for good measure).
There's something called 'Abstraction,
Filtration, Comparison',, applied in this case you would end up with nothing.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I agree. What seems to be happening here is that Symantec is patenting a domain-specific framework for creating code that will analyze files for malicious patterns. While it is a bit broad, at the same time it's innovative and certainly useful.
I'm as big of a critic of the US patent process as anyone, but there are plenty of legitimate patents out there, and on the surface this appears to be one. If they try to enforce it in an overly-broad manner, shame on them, but the patent itself sounds legit.
akad0nric0
This sentence no verb.
While talking to my boss Chris about how Mcafee patented the firewall a few weeks back He made the point: "Do you think the guy who awarded the patent even know what a firewall is?" I think the point still stands.
Behold, another webcomic!
I disagree, all they've done is change their virus definition (a series of tokens in some format) to pseudo code (a different series of tokens in some other format with program like qualities).
I presume the other virus programs already use IF and LOOP tokens to handle polymorphism of virus's because polymorphism is already detected by other companies products.
What interests me, is that if this was a patent for a Spinning Jenny we would *know* if there is prior art from looking at the previous machines and I wouldn't have to 'presume' anything.
But because this is software we have to guess whether other companies use programming constructs like IF and LOOP in their virus definition files that would qualify as the use of P-Code in virus detectors.
I also wonder if they need the patent to protect that idea, if they don't document the virus file format who would know?
Seems to me if they didn't disclose it and it was a real invention then they would have plenty of opportunity to make money from it.
Its like patents are being used as a fight mechanism..... and Symantic has hit out with a left patent hook, meanwhile McAfee strikes with a sneaky undercut design patent.....
rather than a mechanism to reward invention.
In the software industry, "financial incentive to innovate" is totally unnecessary. Innovation is occurring at a break-neck pace (and has been for decades). This is *in spite of*, not because of, the patent system. Software patents are unnecessary to encourage innovation. Instead, they just make it more dangerous for the real innovators, for as soon as they start to compete with the big boys, they might be sued into oblivion by a large stagnant corporation with an arsenal of mostly-kinda-valid patents.
Microsoft patented hundreds (thousands?) of software gizmos last year. I bet as many as half of those patents are bogus. But to prove one was bogus, would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in court (and you still might lose).
The system is BROKEN.
LOL! I wrote some patents, and during layoffs, I was among the first to go - in many government contracting shops, writing patents is expressly an overhead (non-billable) activity, and when the bean counters review the quarterly billability, anyone writing patents comes out on the bottom!
Don't think for an instant that just because you have a good idea, the company thinks its worth (its) money to stake a claim.
I'm amazed at the consistency with which the biggest whiners post anonymously. Slashdot never did a better thing than to mark such posters as cowards.
Regardless:
Did patents encourage the "invention" of UNIX, VMS, CP/M, QDOS, BEOS etc? NO!
You're missing the point (mostly, of my comments on the post to which I was replying, which was proposing collective/communal R&D funded by the public in lieu of private enterprise). Personal ambition to see a better solution (whether out of a Linus-Torvalds-style mission like Linux, or a traditional capitalist-style pursuit of designing and profiting from a better mousetrap). People who want something different or better, or believe that they can make a living by inventing and/or producing the same for others' use, are innovators. Some innovations are expensive to create - in terms of time, materials, people, etc, and it simply can't all be charity work. The need for better systems and software causes people to dream them up and produce them. They shouldn't be punished for doing so by watching someone else avoid all the costs and reap all the rewards.
Property can be stolen, somebody reusing an idea does not deprive the originator of that idea, it is not theft!
I imagine that you're listening to pirated music while you're typing, right? Semantics and hair splitting are the last resort of those that would make intellectual slaves out of creative people. Some innovations (highly complex drugs, for example) don't just pop out of someone's head. It takes millions, billions of dollars for some "ideas" to become viable. That has to be protected, or it just simply won't happen. Patents are the mechanism.
I'm a capitalist, cheap labor works for me
Again, you're missing the point. Cheap labor doesn't invent quantum computing interfaces or new anti-biotics.
These generally aren't the people who collect on their work, thanks to the multitude of pompous assholes that take all the credit for themselves.
Smart people don't work for people that won't reward them. Being "pompous" doesn't get you anything: writing checks does. If you are an innovator, and go to work (and take money from!) someone with whom you've reached some arrangement on patents or copyrights... what's to complain about? Or, are you talking about actual contract fraud? That's not in the scope of this thread, and is probably not what you mean.
No, that's called job satisfaction and individuals are free to seek employment elsewhere
Yeah, and your point is? If you want to work somewhere that owns your patents when you leave, then that's your decision. If you want to own your own patents, you work under different arrangements, which are available. That's not really a difficult concept.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"it's better to just keep your idea a secret, and that would be a huge detriment for those ideas that actually *are* new and innovative, as ideas kept secret tend to get lost over time."
Bull! If we were to abolish the patent system today how many PRODUCTS (notice my word there) would not be made because of it? I am willing to bet very few. If it is an item that is useful then cloners would insure it stayed around. Patents are only used as a weapon and do nothing for "promoting the progress of science and the arts". In fact, if you were to look at a patent before you make a product and you still make it you are now guilty of "willful violation" and triple damages against you.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.