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Trend Micro Sues Barracuda Over Open Source Anti-Virus

Posted by Zonk on from the troubled-waters dept.

Anti-virus firm Trend Micro is suing Barracuda Networks over their use of the open source anti-virus product ClamAV. The issue is Trend Micro's patent on 'anti-virus detection on an SMTP or FTP gateway'. Companies like Symantec and McAfee are already paying licensing fees to Trend Micro. Groklaw carries the word from Barracuda that they intend to fight this case, and are seeking information on prior art to bring to trial. Commentary on the O'Reilly site notes (in strident terms) the strange reality of patents gone bad, while a post to the C|Net site explores the potential ramifications for open source security projects. "Barracuda has been able to leverage open source to bring down the cost of security. Early on Barracuda was blocking spam and viruses at roughly 1/10 the price of the nearest proprietary competitor (that was only selling an antivirus solution). Barracuda has helped to bring down prices across the board, and it has been able to do so because of open source. More open source equals less spam and more security. Trend Micro is effectively trying to raise the price of security." Slashdot and Linux.com are both owned by SourceForge.

3 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. MIMEsweeper prior art by RupW · · Score: 4, Informative
    From TFA (the Groklaw article):

    We also believe that a product called MIMESweeper 1.0 from a company called Clearswift, Authentium, or Integralis anticipates several claims of the '600 patent. We have yet to locate a copy of this product and would appreciate anyone who has a copy sending it our way. Yes, Clearswift currently own MIMEsweeper although Clearswift didn't exist back then - they're a merger of several firms who had similar products.

    They're not hard to find. Why not just ask them?
  2. Re:Yes by hey! · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, to be more accurate, what the patent system is supposed to do in a case like this is lower the net costs of security, and then reward the inventor by diverting some of the savings to him.

    In theory it works like this. Your company is losing $10 million dollars a year because of lack of security. Fixing the problem would cost you $5 million. The inventor comes up with something that you would not have, that cuts the cost from $5 to $1, and he splits the savings with you. He walks of with $2M, you save $2M over doing it yourself of $8M over not doing anything.

    It all breaks down when the patent system issues obvious patents of the form "apply well known technology X in common context Y." In that case, you (or somebody you hired) could solve the problem for $1M. The patent doesn't represent two million dollars of new savings, it represents a million dollars of new expenses.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  3. A quick google for prior art... by martyb · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thanks to google and its archive of usenet posts: this query on google groups of: "FTP SMTP virus proxy server group:comp.*" for the time period of 01-Jan-95 through 26-Sep-95 (the patent was filed on 26-Sep-95) returned this link .

    It appeared in the comp.security.misc newsgroup and the first few paragraphs (emphasis added) suggests to me this might be prior art:

    FOSE '95, WASHINGTON, March 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Norman Data Defense Systems, Inc. today introduced the Norman Firewall, a firewall providing a single, highly secured route for data traveling between networks and the Internet.

    "We are proud to deliver a new level of data defense for networks that are currently vulnerable to attack from a variety of global data security threats, including hackers and viruses," said Norman Data Defense Systems, Inc. President and CEO David J. Stang, Ph.D.

    Like a sentry positioned to identify visitors and then authorize or deny entry, the Norman Firewall combines an integrated front-end server, proxy server, and virus detector to defend systems and information. The Norman Firewall essentially opens incoming and outgoing data packets, and inspects, virus-checks (against more than 6,500 known viruses), and repackages the data packets, before delivery to their destination. No packets ever need to directly enter or leave internal networks.

    I don't have time right now to search further, but wanted to put this out there for others to follow up on. Any takers?

    P.S. As a point of comparison, consider that the Morris Worm was released onto the internet on 02-Nov-88 (more details here: A Tour of the Worm) and THAT was nearly SEVEN YEARS before this patent was filed!