Slashdot Mirror
80% of MS Server Protocols Are Unpatented
perlow writes "ZDNet blogger Jason Perlow and Centrify's Tom Kemp discover that 80 percent of all Microsoft server protocols are un-patented. What exactly then, did SAMBA license? Are Microsoft's patent and intellectual property threats simply the growls of a paper tiger?"
Perhaps they licensed the 20%?
This is obvious, but since nobody has said it, and since this specific topic hasn't come up yet on other /. patent discussions...
IANAL, but...
Shipping your product is equivalent to publication. It start a timer, 1 year in some places, 6 months in others. You have to have your patent applications into the office within that time, or the art is considered "published" and can never be patented. The definition of "shipping" can be pretty darned nebulous, as well. Sending out a beta with a regular NDA is also probably considered publication. You've got to get quite a bit more serious about the restrictions to have a hope of preserving patent rights, from what I understand, and it fact it may be just plain impossible, once it goes out your doors.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
If I'm reading Wikipedia correctly, SMB1 is an IBM invention, while SMB2 is Microsoft's, but with backward compatibility. If that's true, it's murky gray...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Message_Block
I agree, it does seem like they're trying to imply that there's only a 1 out of 5 chance that anything related to the Samba technical detail licensing is patented.
Here is a relevant link:
http://samba.org/samba/PFIF/ - The Samba licensing announcement.
The announcement has a lot of ambiguities (and IANAL), but it appears hey agreed that:
1) Samba Team members would receive access to protocol documentation. This information would only be available to Samba Team members, and available only under NDA
2) Access to information would not restrict CODE that could be produced using this information
3) It does not provide any patent coverage.
4) However, Microsoft would provide a list of patents covering the protocols used by Samba, and keep the list updated. This provides Samba folks a way to understand exactly what methods to avoid - which infringe patents.
5) Microsoft agreed that any patents not detailed in this list and found to be infringed cannot be "asserted" by Microsoft.
Presumably, there are items that MS will provide for #4, so there are patents that relate to Samba.
The claims generally do not contain information that tells someone how to use the invention. Instead, the patent specification must include disclosure sufficient to allow a person with ordinary skill in the relevant art to make and use the invention without undue experimentation. If known, the best mode of implementing the invention must be disclosed in the application. Neither type of disclosure typically occurs within the claims.
In the patent application you linked, there is a section called "DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS" that contains extensive instructions on implementing the invention. It includes pseudocode, numerous diagrams, and other technical data. Whether it is enough to allow someone in the field to compress video using a single chip, I can't say. But it's significantly more detail than the quoted portion of the claims in the post above.
It's very possible that large numbers of patents are gaining approval without containing sufficient disclosure. But the evidence of that does not exist in the claims of those patents, and arguments based on the claims themselves that don't even acknowledge the disclosure of the preferred embodiments hinder the cause of patent reform.
Large companies like MS and IBM dont generally collect patents so that they can stop other people from using or licensing them.
They collect them so that they have a weapon to use against other companies, both in offense and in defense.
There are so many nonsense patents out there that just about every product could be considered to be in infringement.
So if something comes up, and IBM says to Microsoft, you're using one of our patented ideas, you'll need to pay us. MS then comes back with, Oh but you're also using 20 of our patented concepts.
Let's negotiate a patent licensing agreement.
Whoever has the most or the best patents ends up being on the winning side of that dollar figure.
And until the patent law changes, businesses have no choice. If you dont have a patent warchest, then some other company that does have one will be able to bully you. It's a defense mechanism in that sense, and absolutely necessary for large companies like Microsoft.
I'm not saying its right or good, but in the current legal environment, it is necessary.
The summary is misleading or mistaken.
The Protocol Freedom Information Foundation (PFIF) made a one-off copyright payment of 10,000 Euros to Microsoft in return for documentation of the protocols. The PFIF is allowed to pass on to the Samba developers information gleaned from the documentation, and the Samba developers are allowed to release source code based on what they have learnt.
MS were required to offer this deal to all comers after they lost their European anti-trust legal case.
The agreement requires MS to identify any patents that they hold which they believe relate to the protocols (this is so that the developers are not at risk of implementing something described in the documentation and finding themselves under legal attack based on a previously undisclosed MS patent).
http://samba.org/samba/PFIF/
MS offers a patent licensing program to go with the copyright licensing program, but neither the Samba developers nor anyone acting for them have taken that up (and couldn't even if they wished to - it involves per-copy royalties, which are GPL incompatible).