Alan Cox Files Patent For DRM

booooh writes "Alan Cox has filed a patent for DRM (Digital Rights Management). From the filing: 'A rights management system monitors and controls use of a computer program to prevent use that is not in compliance with acceptable terms.' According to the patent pledge of Cox's employer Red Hat, they will not license this technology if the patent is granted. And it can probably be applied to the DRM that is in Vista. This forum has a few more details.

Comments

It's not likely to affect Vista

[rumith]

Microsoft has got its back protected: http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT6330670&id= tNcIAAAAEBAJ&dq=digital+rights+management

Re:It's not likely to affect Vista

[Halo1]

The fact that Microsoft also has patents on DRM does not "protect" it in any way from this particular patent owned by Red Hat. A "defensive patent" only works to the extent that you can assert it to someone who is threatening you. So unless Red Hat starts incorporating DRM stuff in its products which infringes on Microsoft's patent, it has zero defensive value against Red Hat's patent.

That said, Microsoft has a whole lot of other patents as well, and some of those are bound to cover code distributed by Red Hat. I just wanted to correct the misconception that holding a patent on something automatically protects your use of that stuff: it doesn't in any way, all it does is give you the right to prevent others from doing that. But it's quite possible you need umpteen other patent licenses yourself to be able to actually do what you describe in your patent application.

Pointless waste of money and time

[Breakfast Pants]

He might as well try and patent the airplane. If he really wants to prevent further spread of DRM, he should use his energy educating people about it's true costs. The only people who are going to read about this already know about DRM.

Re:That's stupid (in the sense of *really stupid*)

[init100]

If the patent is not granted, which is very likely because there is a ton of prior art,

Are you sure? This does not seem to be a patent for all DRM, but for a system that saves the state of the application when detecting a condition that violates the rules.

It's not like many people don't think that anyway.

What do you mean?

Either way it will be proven that the patent system actually works, because a patent troll has been defeated,

Red Hat is no patent troll. A patent troll is a company whose only business is patenting and suing for infringement. And that isn't a description of Red Hat by a long stretch.

on top of that it will be shown that the people who most adamantly argue against patents a) don't refrain from trying to use the system to their advantage (double standard)

So everyone that don't like the current implementation of the patent system should refrain from patenting things at all? Let's face it, patents exist and don't seem to be going away. As a corporation, refraining from patenting anything would be an invitation to competitors to sue, as you would have almost no defensive capability. Avoiding infringement altogether is about as easy as walking through a minefield, so in case you are sued, you need some defensive measures to fight off the attacker.

file patents for other people's inventions, which we all know is STEALING (or intellectual theft or somesuch).

A lot of patents cover the same or almost the same thing. It's a feature of the current implementation of patents, and whose patent is valid is left for the courts to decide.

One could suspect that the system is set up only to enrich lawyers, as lawyers in the patent office earn money proportional to the number of granted patent applications. Then their patent lawyer friends earn money when corporations battle it out in court. A different implementation might require the patent office to not issue patents that cover each other, but then the lawyers would not be able to enrich themselves as much.

Re:*All* claims must be meet for patent violation

[FallLine]

No, actually, your product or process does have to show all the elements listed in the patent.

No, it does not. The product/process must contain all the elements of just one claim: not all the elements of all the claims. There is a huge difference between the two. If this were really the case, it would be impossible to violate the majority of patents as they contain dependent claims that are mutually exclusive (often the dependent claims describe various implementations of the same idea).

You don't have to take my word for it. Read this:

Something infringes a patent if it has all the elements of a claim in the patent, or performs all the steps of a claim. It does not have to match all the claims, a single one will do. However, it is important that it matches all elements in that single claim. Most patent courts take this requirement quite strictly and will not easily ignore an element in a claim unless it is clearly irrelevant. One often-heard argument against ignoring an element is that patent writers are aware of the strict interpretation and so would not put in an element unless necessary. Therefore, an element that is present in the claim must have been deemed necessary and so may not be ignored.

One great example is that lawsuit against Nintendo http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/08/ 2138250 over the Wiimote, because it has a "trigger" button underneath. And coincidently, the Wiimote also has buttons on top just like the item that Nintendo is supposedly infringing on.

I didn't read this case, but citing slashdot on patent issues is like citing Soviet propaganda to find out about the US Constitution. It is just about the worst place to find reliable information on patents.