U.S. Navy Patents the Firewall?

Krishna Dagli writes to mention a post by Bruce Schneier on his site indicating that the U.S. Navy may be patenting the Firewall. Whether or not it is their intention to do so is unclear. From the patent description: "In a communication system having a plurality of networks, a method of achieving network separation between first and second networks is described. First and second networks with respective first and second degrees of trust are defined, the first degree of trust being higher than the second degree of trust. Communication between the first and second networks is enabled via a network interface system having a protocol stack, the protocol stack implemented by the network interface system in an application layer."

Comments

I think I have prior art in my D-link

[Trigun]

And my cisco, and my netopia, and my netgear.

Government patents?

[DoofusOfDeath]

Instinctively, I hate the notion of the government patenting anything. It might be because it seems ridiculous that anything the taxpayers paid for should be made unavailable to them. But... I can't find anything in the constitution that makes this abhorent practice illegal or unjustified. My reaction seems motivated by civic virtue rather than a legal basis.

Does anyone know of a solid legal reason that the government shouldn't be able to obtain patents?

Errr...

[sarlos]

I may be thinking of something else, but it sounds more like a method of keeping secure information on the secure network, not allowing it to leak to the unsecure network, while still allowing data to cross from the unsecure side to the secure side... From their description, it's based on a pump architecture:

[0026] Referring to FIG. 1, there is shown in one embodiment of the present invention a high-level schematic of a communication network system 100 having a first communication network 102 having a first level of security or level of trust "x", and a second communication network 104 having a second level of security "y", where y

Warning!

[jbeaupre]

To all of you shooting from the hip: STOP! You're just making a fool of yourself.
Read the claims. Read them in light of the description of the patent. And learn patent terminology. Then you can make some general statements. And if it's only a publication (like this navy one), not a patent, don't even bother with that.
If you must draw a conclusion, and you're sure this is about a firewall, then at least go the step to know they are claiming a type of firewall. Which is perfectly legit (as long as it contains a new, non-obvious element). If you think otherwise, go learn about patents, come back, and then we'll talk.

PS:plurality is a very common patent term. It means more than one (duh!). Not even worth making a comment about, but someone felt compelled to jabber about it.