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Prior Art In Barracuda-Trend Micro Lawsuit
Joe Barr writes "Bruce Byfield reports at Linux.com that a Swedish developer, Goran Fransson, has 'given a deposition in the Barracuda-Trend Micro case that appears to seriously undermine Trend Micro's patent on gateway virus scanning.' Gransson has resurrected a product (still in its shrinkwrap) sold by Ten Four, the company he worked for at the time, to prove that it provided gateway virus scanning in January 1995. Trend Micro's patent application was filed in September of that year. If you were — or worked for — a Ten Four customer during 1995, you might be able to help Barracuda prove that Trend Micro's patent omits prior art." We discussed this important patent case when it was filed in January. (Slashdot and Linux.com share a corporate overlord.)
If I understand correctly, it's not that Fransson's evidence may not be enough so much as that, the more evidence, the better. Considering the time, effort and money put into such cases, you can't blame Barracuda for taking no chances. - nanday (Bruce Byfield)
Any BBS system worth its salt back in the late 80's (!) had virus scanning of uploaded files. That's *exactly* the same thing as an e-mail server scanning incoming mails.
If anything, this just puts another nail in the coffin for the USPTO.
Linux 2.4 kernel tree. The OS and userland (if you can ever get a shell) are all from an old version of Mandrake (before they changed to mandrivia) linux.
They do publish source. On that page, I found a link to the complete source of their Linux distribution.
Perhaps if software patents were immediately outlawed, we'd solve this particular problem. Because the US and some other countries have so stupidly decided to allow the patenting of this sort of thing, we have absurd cases like this.
As it stands, I knew a number of BBSs back in the late 1980s and early 1990s who were doing virus scans on files uploaded. Pretty much had to do. The only difference was that the transport protocol was X, Y, or Zmodem or Kermit. For all intents and purposes, TCP/IP is not really all that different than Zmodem, so there we have it, a gateway to a private network with virus scanning, probably at least four or five years prior to this.
I'll even go further and say that Trend Micro likely knew this, unless their software engineers were mental retards, so the company should be fined a few million bucks and banned for a decade from even calling the US Patent Office. They're intentionally trying to claim a patent on a concept that was years older than their crappy software.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
15 Feb 1995 in comp.groupware.lotus-notes.misc
also, international laws differ, but i believe in the US you have 1 year from the date of first public disclosure to submit a patent application. So, Trend Micro might even be able to point back to a publication (presentation, etc) of the idea up to a year before their patent application, and claim that the other company was just copying their invention.
Sounds like they might have to dig back farther than that software release date.
Tue, 25 Oct 1994 INFO: MS-Mail UUCP: Includes details with SMTP and plugins for scanning documents