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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..."
Here we go again... just another one of those slashdot posts about how the patent system is clearly flawed... Even I can't help ranting about it! Patents are granted to everybody who applies, and it's just left up to the courts to decide if it's valid or not.
...patents *do* have a place, they're just mis-used (and the system's broken). If a small developer could get a patent for $20, but then the next patent cost $40 and then $80 and so on, it would really discourage people from getting tons of patents. ...just a thought (I'm sure it's been suggested before...)
Companies just amass huge patent libraries. Hm... there should really be an exponential cost increase with each patent the company owns. That would prevent big companies from getting thousands and thousands of useless unenforcable patents.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
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.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
I fully support companies retaining ownership of their intellectual property. However, how granular do we go. This is remincient of e-commerce being patented. If we follow old patent laws, we will surely stifle creativity. In contrast, if we do not have patents, we will likely stifle creativity since no one can claim ownership to their idea and profit accordingly.
I can not wait for someone to file a patent for a virus, when the US patent office can accept this then they are sure to accept that too.
Spammers are suing those who filter their crap away, next thing we know virus authors are suing anti-virus vendors... it is truely a brave new world.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
They talk about litigation at the time of acquisition? Just how "non-obvious" is this thing, that everyopne's already using it? What's next, litigation starting at the day of patent application?
Oh, and for those who say OSS projects "can just code around it": try writing a program that scans files for viruses without using the protected "Method of scanning a file for viruses".
I know, not quite what they patented, but it'll come to that, mark my words! You cannot write around patents that completely cover the results you're trying to achieve.
If you write closed-source software, how would anyone prove your code infringes on a patent, unless they violate other laws and reverse engineer your program?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I'm sure they're going to use it against other antivirus companies as well, but I'd bet money this was put in the works a while ago to protect Symantecs extremely lucrative virus protection business against being wiped away by Microsoft, who has been making noises about releasing its own virus software for a while now.
I wouldn't be surprised if Symantec refuses to allow Microsoft to obtain a license to the patent no matter how much money Micrsoft offers. One might hope tactics like this would convince businesses that software patents are a bad idea, but what they are more likely going to do is make businesses do more of the same so they can have simmilar dominance over this or that market segment.
Hell, this is even a really good reason to outsource software development to foreign coders. They aren't encumbered by software patents, and if you're only using the generated code internally, it's a lot harder to prove patent violations.
So if I patent virus can I take Symantec to court for reverse engineering?
-- This Sig has been scanned and is virus free!
Unix vendors like Red Hat, Sun, and Apple design their operating systems so as to render theoretical viral infection pretty difficult -- note how nobody has unleashed a virus on all the Linux servers.
It's only a matter of time until Microsoft builds basic antivirus functionality into Windows, which along with better design would run a lot of security companies out of business.
Did you UNDERSTAND it? (New is that the patent is actually linked in this story)
Kill kill kill.
1. This is an obvious (ok, advanced,optimized ) method to scan for virusses. More or less they create a kind of vm to simulate if a program behaves like a virus.
2. creating an virtual environment/sandbox to see how a virus behaves is nothing new.
This kind of patent decription is not enough to recreate the system. That is what i understood for patents. By revealing the details of your invention it allows for others to use the invetion after expiration of the invention. However major parts are missing. (what p-code, what entry points?)
I am still aginst this purely software patents.
No, patents prevent competition.
If you mean that patents prevent your competitors from using your invention without having to bear the costs of inventing a competing technology themselves, then, yes. But company X making profit off of their own invention means that company Y will need to innovate and compete by arriving at a better way to solve the problem (and thus win back those customers). Patents encourage the creative innovation of competing (and superior) patentable products/concepts/practices.
Since the _only_ valid societal rationale for patents to exist is to promote the public good
Really? I would think that being able to benefit from your labor and creativity is a strong incentive. Strong enough that the person who does it best gets rewarded accordingly, and only indirectly (though substantially) does the public benefit. The public benefit is frosting on the cake. Protection of an individual's claim to their own work is the heart of it.
it would be a LOT more simple & straightforward to promote innovation if society collectively paid a lot of smart people to create useful ideas
Excellent idea, Citizen Comrade! Why, in countries where that's been the practice, we see fantastic displays of innovation in the areas of stealing IP and technologies from those private innovators elsewhere that are actually getting it done faster, better, and with better-paid people in a higher standard of living. I'm sure some of the community-based researchers in North Korea, or perhaps the ones that prospered so well in the Sovier Union, would disagree with me, me being a clueless Yankee and all.
The anti-competitive effect of patents just turns out to be prone to abuse
Though I'd say that the abuse of the best and brightest people in any collective setting is a much more pervasive problem. In any academic, or even private "team"-based setting where a group of people are tasked with a complex goal, some small percentage of brighter bulbs will always be the people doing the heavy lifting and the creative thinking that actually moves the project forward. The only way not to burn people like that out is a merit-based system that rewards and encourages going the extra mile on (say) research and development. Your system would work fine, as long as the minority of the research communinity that actually innovates gets some sort of reward (and knows they will be getting some sort of reward) for their unique innovations. Oh, wait, that's called a patent and the right to use it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
OK, so I was wrong. Thanks for the link though - I think this is a good solution to the problem (from the article):
Only in post-revolution France could an invention be given "free to all the world" and its inventor rewarded with a lifelong pension from the government.
I vote we get rid of patents and do this.
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