Trend Micro Draws Boycott Over AV Patent Case

Linux.com is reporting that in addition to the bad press, Trend Micro's patent case against Barracuda Networks' use of ClamAV has drawn an apparent boycott of Trend Micro. "Dutch free knowledge and culture advocacy group ScriptumLibre called for 'a worldwide boycott on Trend Micro products.' In its news release, ScriptumLibre summarizes the case, with its chairman, Wiebe van der Worp, describing Trend Micro's actions as 'well beyond the borders of decency.' The ScriptumLibre site includes link to free graphics that supporters can add to their Web pages to show their support and a call for IT professionals that provides a links to help people to educate themselves about the case and suggests a series of actions that people can take in the boycott." Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by SourceForge Inc.

Comments

Look no further than SCO

[Marcion]

If you want to see how the open source world responds to threats, look no further than SCO. Many Linux fans are also Unix admins at work, and many of them got their employers to switch from SCO to *anything other Unix-like OS* in response to the threats. Now SCO is in bankruptcy and not likely to come out.

Re:Boycott all commercial antivirus programs?

[houstonbofh]

Commercial is not always bad. Some users do not have a clue, so they need to rent one from support. However, the pre-installed extortion-ware than does not cleanly remove is reason enough to boycott McAntic for life.

Re:So will there ever be a legitimate patent to yo

[TheLinuxSRC]

Trend Micro is not a patent troll, they are a legitimate company who patented a process that they developed. Now they are exercising their rights as a patent holder. So why the hate? This is what the patent system is designed to do.

As I understand it, the patent involves filtering viruses before they make it to end user computers; eg. at the router/mail relay etc. The reason for the hate is that this is an obvious way to prevent viruses from entering your network. The hate is not so much aimed at Trend Micro as it is at the broken patent. However, the fact that Trend Micro is suing their competition using a broken patent as ammo is not going to earn Trend Micro any kudos.

Re:Patents are anti-competitive

[automandc]

The parent post is remarkably uninformed and reflects a poor understanding of the patent system and how it is used.

First of all, patents have always been the domain of big business. One of the reasons many of the "founding fathers" were so suspicious of the patent system was that patents granted by the King were government granted monopolies given to particular large corporations, usually as a political favor. Whoever had the "patent" on the tea kettle became the only tea kettle maker in England until someone convinced the King otherwise. Thus, the U.S. Constitution was written to specifically limited to allow patents only "for a limited time" (Art. I, section 8, cl. 8). This was the answer to the uneasy tension between giving an incentive to create while not granting perpetual monopolies. Thomas Jefferson, himself an inventor, recognized that patents are a necessary incentive to invent, which enriches society.

The antithesis of patents is trade secrets. If I have a trade secret (e.g., the mythical recipe of Coca-Cola), I don't have to tell any one else how to make it, and as long as I am really good at keeping the secret the world will never find out -- hence, there will always be only one "Coke" even though there might be other "colas".

By having a patent system, the entire world gets to learn about your new invention, possibly improve on or build on your idea, and after a period of time they get to copy it themselves (or, they can license it and avoid the wait).

Moreover, today's technology is such that, in many fields, it is simply unrealistic to think that real progress could be made by individuals working alone. For example, no person puttering in their basement is going to come up with a new process for fabbing microchips, or a new drug that is proven safe in humans -- those things require lots and lots of resources that only corporations or other institutions (e.g., Universities) can afford. Even Thomas Edison, the prototypical "inventor" had an army of technicians and assistants working for him by the end of his life.

Patents are not "evil," nor are corporations that participate in the patent system. There are, however, a lot of bad patents out there right now (for a variety of reasons beyond the scope of this post). However, a company that has a "bad" patent cannot be faulted for trying to enforce it -- they are simply trying to protect their business interests (yes, business is cut-throat; get over it). Theoretically, the courts are supposed to take care of the bad patents. The fact that the courts may be failing is not the fault of the businesses that are seeking to protect their own interests.

Re:Patents are anti-competitive

[Bruce Perens]

What you wrote was the intent of the patent system, but not the reality. Engineers in tech companies are routinely told not to look at patents, because of the treble-damages problem or what I call the penalty for looking, damages three times as high for "knowing" infringement rather than unknowing. This makes the disclosure function of a patent inoperable. In addition, the claims of patents are written to capture as many possible applications as possible, even ones that had not been invented by the filer of the patent. This requires vagueness in the claims and further reduces the probability that they actually disclose anything of use. Indeed, the language generally used in patent claims is not particularly readable by engineers in the applicable discipline. One need only attempt to read a few patents for this to be clear. Thus, trade secret is not the antithesis of patent. A release of Open Source software is much closer to the antithesis of trade secret because it is a working and usually comprehensible implementation. Patents generally go hand-in-hand with closed-source software, and the source of that software is legally treated as a trade secret. Finally, in software, the duration of patents is so long compared to the duration of a generation of technology that there is no useful art remaining by the time the patent goes into the public domain.

Surely you must be aware of these issues.

Bruce

Boycott all commercial AV software? No !

[golodh]

I don't think this would be at all reasonable. Boycotting Trend Micro software is something I'd agree with though.

However, much as I like Open Source Software in general, I consider it perfectly OK if people decide to use commercial, closed-source, anti-virus software. I would urge them to (re)consider using such software in favour of OSS, but if they wish, for whatever reason, to spend their money on closed-source anti-virus software, then best of luck to them (and the producers of closed-source AV software).

What galls me in this case is the unfair way in which Trend Micro uses a blindingly obvious patent they somehow got their hands on to squeeze an OSS competitor out of the market. The patent, basically the idea of having a virus scanner on gateway servers to a network that scans incoming files as they are being transmitted, is of course trivial.

Why?

The idea that in order to prevent infected files from entering a network, you can do the checks "at the border", i.e. in the gateway server, is about as obvious as the idea of keeping a place dry by having a roof and 4 walls. Since the incoming files aren't stored on the gateway server but immediately forwarded, the only thing you can do is to stream the incoming file through an AV scanner. Patenting an "invention" like that is of course only possible in the US.

Unfortunately the law says that even such patents have force, so an unscrupulous commercial AV vendor (Trend Micro) can use it to sue people for doing this.

That's why I'd support a boycott of Trend Micro. Not because they're closed-source vendors, but because they behave like thugs.

Re:Patents are anti-competitive

[Bruce Perens]

Go ahead, flame away, I've got tough skin. :)

This is a rhetorical strategy: Label your opponents as flamers and some folks will see them that way. Spare us, please.

The parent post to which I was responding suggested that all patents are ipso facto bad

He's commenting about a software patent. That's what the article is about. There are compelling arguments that software patents are a mistake.

However, I get a little weary of the "engineers are pure as driven snow" attitude.

The pure-as-snow ones don't become expert witnesses and are not generally asked to testify for the prosecution in an infringement case. However, given the last time the USPTO prosecuted a case of perjury on the application (1974, and the enforcement department no longer exists), it doesn't seem that there is any incentive for purity.

Patent and Trade secrets both seek to balance public good against personal gain

Yes, but we're back to the intent again. In the case of software patents, rather than a balance all of the incentives seem to be for the bad actor.

(2) Any company that thinks it can avoid a willful patent infringement claim by telling their engineers not to look at patents needs to question whether their corporate counsel is serving them or the other way around.

I'm not sure the counsel think that's all that needs to be done to protect the company, but it is standard direction for engineers in tech companies. I've had it at HP (internal counsel) Pixar (Wilson Sonsini, Larry Sonsini was our direct counsel) and it is at the standard at many companies.

I don't agree that patents are always longer than the current "generation of technology." Look at GIF, MP3, recalc etc.

GIF is a legacy technology and the specific patent, the Unisys - Terry Welch algorithm to preload tables in the Lempel-Ziv compressor, was arguably trivial and was far from the state of the art when it expired. MP3 seems to be encumbered by patents still in force but not from its inventors. If I understand what recalc you are taking about, I'd make a case it is trivial and pre-existed the patent.