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?"

Comments

Microsoft Tax

[Tuoqui]

...is what they licensed

Ok U'm stupid today

[sm62704]

Why should a server protocol be patented? A patent should be for something you don't want copied. If I were selling servers I'd want to interoperate with clients and other servers.

Oh, Microsoft. Never mind, my bad.

Re:Ok U'm stupid today

[spun]

No, a trade secret is for something you don't want copied. A patent is for something where you want to make money off of the copies.

It only takes one...

[eison]

99% could be unpatented, it only takes one patent to ruin you.

WTF?

[Blakey Rat]

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?

Is this article trying to present me with the logic: 80% of protocols are un-patented, therefore SMB is un-patented?

Because I don't see how that follows at all. Is SMB part of the 80% or part of the 20%? If you want to know what SAMBA licensed, why don't you just ask them? I'm sure they'd know...

Re:It makes sense ...

[Qzukk]

they would need to describe them

These days with the patent office handing out patents like candy, you don't even have to do that. For instance, in the firehose there's been this story for a while http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=631632 "Flip Video Camera Maker Sued For Patent Infringeme" Regarding this patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5781788.PN.&OS=PN/5781788&RS=PN/5781788

So without further ado, Claim #1 of the patent:

1. A video codec, comprising:

a single semiconductor chip providing for a video input connection from a camera and a video output connection to a monitor of decompressed data, and a transmit channel and a receive channel of compressed data;

an interface connected to the chip for external connection to a separate frame memory dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and that provides for interim storage of incoming and outgoing video data; and

a video compressor/decompressor disposed fully within the chip and connected to compress video information received from said video input connection for output on said transmit channel, and connected to decompress video information received from said receive channel for output on said video output connection;

wherein, said compression of video information is by spatial de-correlation of intraframe information and temporal decorrelation of interframe information, and said transmit and receive channels have communication channel bit rates reduced by quantization and variable length coding

So. Based on that, how does one compress video using a single chip (the patent has absolutely NOTHING about its implementation)? Being able to show that might make it actually look like the company actually invented something, instead, rendered to its most basic element, the patent says "anything that does stuff using only one chip plus DRAM" which is something an 8 year old could come up with, without even knowing what DRAM means.

The patent office has long since slid past allowing "crap" to churning out patents of "pure unadulterated bullshit".