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Visto Founder Blogs about Microsoft Lawsuit
neelm writes "Reported a few days ago, Visto is suing Microsoft over patent infringements. David Cowen, a founder of Visto (and Verisign) has made a recent blog post about the patent involved. He clears up what exactly the patents involved are, but what may be a more interesting read is the patent itself - issued in March of 2004. It might be nice to see Microsoft defending itself from patent litigation I admit, but I'm not sure I want to give validity to this patent."
At first I thought maybe they were going to sue them for stealing one of the variations on the name "Vista".
Is it better to support the little guy versus the big guy in any patent brawl?
Not for me. Patents are scummy ways of avoiding competition. In my non-existant "utopia" I would never accept them -- don't invent if you can't compete with what you invent. Someone else will come out with the same idea soon enough.
For many geeks, their careers probably rest on companies that have many patents. Yet how much quicker would technology progress if we were able to perfect the imperfect and not have to wait a decade or two for a patent to expire? How many geeks here on slashdot that have been part of a team that discovered a patented process would continue to research and develop new products because they love the process, not just the endgame?
I continue to work on new ideas and new processes for my business, some of them that I openly share with my competition. Sure, business procedures may not be patented, but why not? Why can I patent a keyboard style on a cell phone but I can't patent how I lay out my retail store or how I handle customer complaints?
I don't support either party in this lawsuit, and in the end, only the lawyers win. Guess who pays?
From the blog post:
"These PC's were running on the same large TCP/IP network as my PC client at Bessemer as well our Exchange server, and yet there was no way for me to access my corporate email and calendar."
"These patents were written by programmers who were engaged in building a viable, commercial platform, and genuinely wished to protect the invention."
Here's the deal... He wants to fix a problem, bridge a gap. On obvious gap. The patent system is supposed to protect inventions, not prevent people from creating their own solutions to a problem. I see nothing in that stupid patent that isn't nebulous and pathetic.
"But this time Microsoft is steamrolling its way into wireless messaging through the clear theft of my, Daniel's, Chris', and others' intellectual property. That's why Visto is suing."
Pray, tell, what exactly did Microsoft steal? Did they steal your problem space? Because patents don't cover problems. They cover solutions.
Oh - and this photo is mildly amusing too...
My pics.
(disclaimer: I am a IP patent holder)
I've been using Groove for over a year now, and it is really cool. It does all that stuff that is in the Visto patent. So does Yahoo, and a bunch of other services. I can see that in 1995, perhaps this was a new idea, but ten years later it is all over the place. Synchronizing files and services by use of a global server? I would bet that even in '95 you could find analogies somewhere -- incremental backups or some such. Wasn't database replication being worked back in 95 as well?
It's unclear from the information provided whether this was a truly new invention that Microsoft is trying to poach (along with half the world of computer development) or it was a day late and a dollar short. Once again, waiting ten years after the patent application is filed makes such analysis almost impossible. Technology is moving very quickly. The patent system needs to be fixed where we are not arguing ten-year old ideas -- by this time it's all old hat.
My Blog
During the years, we've had the chance to sue the hell out of a lot of companies for all sorts of patented ideas we came up while picking our noses, but this is my first big project.
This says it all about patents really. This guy admits these "highly valuable" ideas, worth millions were dreamed up by a few guys sat around picking their noses. Of course, nobody else could possible come up with such brilliant ideas on their own, when it takes so much time, development effort and expertise to put these patent portfolios together... Morons...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
It would appear that the US patent system has now simply collapsed into inanity. It is starved resources, abused by large corporations, and now they in turn are finding themselves the victims of the same behavior. Real patent reform is needed, and my feeling is now that clearly abusive patents should lead to massive fines and/or suspensions for long periods from making any more patents (and that means against future companies that have anybody on the board of a company that has previously been caught in this kind of scam).
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So this guy patented rsync?
Andrew Tridgell has copyrights on rsync as old as 1996, possibly even older.
This patent never should have passed the Novel or Obviousness tests. I find it amazing reading some of these patents that have been issued and finding that the patent itself explains why it should not be patentable. From the uspto.gov website:
"The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention."
Now I'll get a long list of replies with "if it was obvious how come nobody did it before". All I can tell you is that just because somebody hasn't done it doesn't mean its not obvious.
Let me explain it this way, if you have a problem that needs to be solved by developing a software application and you can sit down with a developer and he says "yeah, I can do that" then its obvious. If the developer says "thats impossible" and somebody then spends significant time and resources trying to find a solution and does, they very well may have something that is patentable.
That said I would also point out that in 99.999% of all cases software algorithms and solutions are not patentable, they should be covered by copyright. And copyright covers the actual code a binaries, not reverse engineering. If somebody does the same thing with their own code it is not a copyright violation.
burnin