20+ Companies Sued Over OS Permissions Patent

freemywrld writes "According to the article on Ars Technica, Microsoft, Symantec and 20 other companies are being sued over patents covering 'systems for governing application and data permissions, as well as ensuring application integrity.' The patents were granted in the 90's to the Information Protection and Authentication of Texas (IPAT). From the article: 'A response from any of the defendants is still forthcoming, and it is unclear whether the authentication and permissions systems that IPAT's patent describes are precluded by prior art. Even if IPAT has a leg to stand on in court, however, it certainly didn't take the easy route to recovering any damages by suing 22 companies.'"

Comments

Good luck with that

[neokushan]

That's a lot of BIG companies to be suing. I surely hope they have good lawyers or they're going to get a jolly-rodgering!

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

There's less profit in manufacturing than there was in generations past because nearly everything's a commodity, with low margins and world-wide competition pushing those margins ever downward. You can't have a first world economy based on manufacturing today any more than you can have a fist class personal income assembling toasters in a factory, or gluing shoes together in a sweatshop. To make real money these days, a nation must invent, create, own and market the ideas that Chinese and Vietnamese then toil to manufacture and export. China's income is massive, but as China grows richer, it will be less able to afford wasting its effort making the world's trinkets, or it will be stuck in relative poverty.

Some manufacturing is profitable of course, but on the whole, it's a good thing for the US that it has moved on. The US's problems today have to do with bad debt management, not the reduction in toastermaking.

Re:Good luck with that

[moniker127]

Software is real. The US exports more software than any other country on the planet. The shitty econemy is completley unrelated. We're in tough economic times because: A- Credit card companies / banks take control of the people's assets by making it very easy for them to spend more money than they have (the rich get richer) B- The stock market is controlled by a collective of (rich) morons who buy and sell at the drop of a hat, based on no evidence. (money gets wasted on bullshit companies who dont use it for anything useful) C- Because we have a wasteful government that will spend billions on wars. (if we spent as much on education as on warfare, we would be number 1 in the world, but we dont, so we're somewhere around number 40 in quality of education) conclusion: We raise a bunch of morons who go out and spend money they dont have on crap that does not make sense, which bankrupts them. Then, we send to to go kill people for no apparent reason.

Re:Good luck with that

[plasmacutter]

correction..

real goods cannot be copied infinitely without a marginal cost of production. As such they have no export value and thus do not provide positive cash flow to our nation.

correcting this to read:

real goods cannot be copied infinitely without a marginal cost of reproduction while software can. As such, software has no export value and will not provide positive cash flow for our national economy.

Money is based off real resources, not wishful thinking. the belief in IP is no better than the housing or .com bubble.

Re:Good luck with that

[TapeCutter]

The US (and EU for that matter) spend huge amounts of money on farm subsidies much to the disgust of Aussie farmers who get very few subsidies, not to mention the third world farmers who are pushed out of the market alltogether. Protectionisim (in all it's forms) stiffles trade, kills competition and creates mountains of unwanted food in one place while others starve in another place.

It may sound tempting and may even have the potential to make a nation self sufficient, but in practice what happens is that wealthy countries mirror each other tarrifs "tit for tat" style. The consumer and the third world farmer are the biggest losers, in effect the taxpayer is paying the government to kill the competition (quite literally in some cases). There is however a more subtle loss of efficientcy in the country weathy enough to provide the subsidy.

"when we engaged in mild protectionism this wasn't an issue. We used to charge tariffs on imports from nations without proper human and labor rights."

I would call that a sanction, it's a different and more legitimate practice but it's open to abuse and still triggers tit for tat reactions.

Re:Good luck with that

[phanboy_iv]

Obviously, you *both* belong to political party.

Re:Good luck with that

[inviolet]

Manufacturing moved elsewhere 20yrs ago. IIRC Reagan and Thatcher spent most of the 80's crushing unions and telling everyone it would be a GoodThing(TM). Not that I think the removal of tarrifs and perpetual subsidies is a bad thing, quite the opposite, but you need more than that to "level the playing field".

...assuming you believe that the citizens of a modern, enlightened society belong on an assembly line, performing repetitive work. They don't.

That sort of work is a temporary "rite of passage" that societies pay in order to enter the more proper world of mind work. Once they complete the rite, let the mindless work be passed down to the next modernizing country, as China is beginning to do now too.

You also need to take into account the reglatory regime under which the manafacturing was performed. To do otherwise is simply exporting the labour/environmental problems to nations that don't/can't give a fuck about either.

Yes, those countries cannot yet afford to care about those problems. Those issues are 'problems' only for people whose basic needs have been completely met. To poor folks, environmental problems might be a perfectly acceptable price to pay in order to have steady work, a reliable food supply, and rapid modernization. We went through this phase too, beginning about a century ago. Now you would deny it to other cultures because you disagree with their risk/reward tradeoffs.

You remind me of a rich idiot who would like to force the lower class to drink only Starbucks coffee because the cheap stuff is made from nasty Rubosto beans grown from Africa.

Before you know what's happening everything is made elsewhere, it's dirt cheap

Nothing wrong with that... though once again, the primary beneficiary of this is the lower classes and we've already seen that you don't understand why that matters.

and has a high probability of serious defects and toxic contaminants

Bulls***.

Do you know how much stuff we import from wherever, and what percentage of it has 'serious defects' and contamination? Or are you just stringing words together in whatever way will make your point?

(reminicent of pre-seventies "jap-crap").

That's an excellent point. The Japanese went through this phase too, in the seventies, in order to become the economic jewel they are today. Now it's China's turn. Next it will be India and Thailand. And so on. I suspect your real motivation behind your rant is that you fear the lesser countries will someday reach our level.

IMHO the corect term for the labour side of this is "cheap labour capitalisim", I don't know if there is an equivalent for the environmental side.

As noted, it's a transition phase that cultures willingly pay. They are willing because they want to be modernized, and cheap/dirty manufacturing is the accellerated modernization program that the West offers the world.

Re:Good luck with that

[TapeCutter]

As someone who worked in so called "mindless jobs" from the mid-seventies to the early nineties I think your entire post is the most obnoxious pile of elitist claptrap I have heard in a long time.

BTW: Japan automated their factories and that is why they kicked the crap out of the UK & US car industry while maintaining a high standard of living.

Location, location, location

[arth1]

Let me guess -- this was filed in the Eastern Texas District, right?

It's about time some higher authority arrested the patent troll friendly "judges" for contempt of justice. Or Eastern Texas seceding, as is their right according to their terms for joining the union. Either would work fine with me.

Re:I'm Scared

[MichaelSmith]

This patent seems to be closer to Access Control Lists in VMS. They existed before 1990 of course. IPAT should sue HP.

Straight to step 3: ????

[RyoShin]

It could have just been omitted from the article (or just unknown/not thought to ask), but I see nothing about the sue-ee contacting any of these companies seeking royalty payments before whipping out the good ol' lawyer.

I also note that IPAT "apparently purchased these patents from their listed inventor of Addison M. Fischer". It doesn't give the date that they bought it (I presume one could look through patent records to see a transfer of ownership?), but I would not be surprised at all if the purchase went through on Dec. 29 when the suit was filed Dec. 30.

If they did indeed jump straight to step three, I hope the court smacks them down. Companies should be required to put forth a good faith effort to enter into royalty agreements with those using their patents before wasting tax payer dollars. Also, since they were granted in the mid 90s, something about due diligence towards protecting an IP, or else it's relegated to the public domain (or the companies already using it do not have to pay royalties to continue using it in the same manner).

Even better, if this isn't already done, if someone files a patent/copyright suit, they have to pay for the judge, baliff, stenographer, etc. If the IP is truly that important, they'll have no problem spending an extra $100K to get it. Of course, this could backfire and cause independent inventors to not get the royalties rightly owed them, so some sort of middle ground would be best.

Botting

[Idiomatick]

I could make a bot/spider that scanned the whole internet for phrases that could be construed as ideas. Then have a bot copy that idea into a patent form and send it in. I figure it will cost me about 5million dollars or so to get a sizable chunk of ideas in the world. Then in 5years or i can sue every for several billion dollars.
  So who wants to invest in my company, Trolls R Us (NASDAQ: FUCK).

Time to rethink patent laws

[zwekiel]

When patents were first granted, it was on the justification that they engendered innovation and research by providing a fair incentive for companies to develop new technology. At this point, any argument relying on this justification has become completely broken.

Patents have begun to do the exact opposite of what they were meant to do. Rather than encourage development of new technologies, patents have become a way to choke the application of novel technologies in industry. So-called "patent holding companies" have become little more than extortion gangs, demanding their share of the money to which they have no right at all. Governments across the globe have extended copyright and patents, not for the protection of the people and industry, but at the behest of lobbyists.

Patents, as they exist in their current form, are not fair to anyone, except the patent owner. Governments must adopt a fairer stance in order to reverse this alarming trend. Lower the duration of patents, and adopt a system of mandatory royalties, which forces patent owners to license their patents for a fair royalty, determined by a third party.

This needs a mod-up, also - 1969, UNIX

[plasmacutter]

Apparently, a six year delay negates patent protection (the patentee has "unreasonably and inexcusably" delayed prosecution) under the same laches idea as made above.

Enforcement Laches does not require detrimental reliance. However, the patentee must be shown to have "unreasonably and inexcusably" delayed bringing suit and that the alleged infringer subsequently suffered material prejudice. A six year delay creates a presumption of laches.

Patent Law Blog (Patently-O): Laches and Equitable Estoppel.

This is a very informative post.

By the way, unix, which incorporated the archetypal permission system, was developed in 1969.
This is a clear case of prior art which even a "patent troll judge" cannot ignore. It's neither obscure nor contestable as its history is very well documented.
Any judge who doesn't throw it out of court after unix is brought forward as an example of prior art should be immediately scheduled for competency hearings.

If you're looking for prior art

[symbolset]

Start here.

Direct Link to the more recent patent. USPTO needs to look into tinyurl code for short link redirects to content. They're not alone.

It looks like your basic troll patent. They try to get all of the possible potential access control mechanisms for programs in the hope that in the future some of them are employed, without bothering to check that all of them are not already employed decades since. Shoddy work, as one would expect. Is it this easy to get a patent? Maybe I should field a few. What are they, $500?

Somebody will settle anyway. More and more I'm coming to the controversial point of view that asshats like this are doing us a service. They're illustrating that the copyright and patent system we have now works against its stated purpose: to promote progress of science and the useful arts. If only we could start over...

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Yah, wealth is created by making stuff , and not by just pulling ideas out of one's arse. If the ideas can be used to make something, then they might be worth a bit, but an idea alone is worth exactly bupkus.

Cheers,

Re:The defendants

[kimvette]

Good luck suing Novell; their network operating system (Netware) supported access control lists very early on. They can demonstrate prior art very easily, cutting the legs out from under the suit. Those trolls would have been best off avoiding suing Novell.

Re:Texas cannot secede

[atraintocry]

The one that never got past the Senate, you mean?

Texas was annexed via a joint resolution.

Re:I'm Scared

[jd]

Any OS that was listed as Orange Book B1, B2, B3 or A1 certified would also violate the patent and/or be prior art. This includes Trusted Irix, Trusted Solaris and Genesis. Probably many, many others besides. Since the Orange Book says nothing about having to get such OS' licensed under some obscure patent, and yet the originator of the patent appears to be from the very group that developed the Orange Book, one must assume that the patent is fraudulent and specifically designed to ensnare precisely the operating systems likely to qualify through inside information on what systems did qualify.

MOD PARENT UP!

[FlyingGuy]

Novell has current working prior art dating back to 1981!

It is real

[dabadab]

It's interesting to see that bullshit like this is taken seriously by the /. community.
Of course, you can say that "intellectual property" is just a "social construct". It is - just like any other property. But you should not forget that all that stuff (software, entertainment, etc) are stuff that people find useful - and they are even useful in the sense that they enable us to make more (or more advanced) stuff. If you go down this 'ony real stuff counts' path, soon you will arrive to the point that only work that actually produces "real stuff" counts - so management, engineering, R&D etc is absolutely unneeded. I don't know if it's necessary to point out that if the world would be really so focused on "producing real stuff" it would itself real soon in the stone age.
If you need actual evidence, take a look at the socialist countries of the second half of the 20. century: the prevailing idea was there that farmers and blue-collars are the ones that really do something - the "intellectuel" class was considered suspicious and kept as small as possible. Well, needless to say, it didn't do any good to the economy.

Re:I'm Scared

[Kalriath]

No. National Security usually allows the government to completely ignore the rights of an IP owner, essentially annexing those rights for itself. I know it's like that here, I can't imagine the US being more restricted.

Re:The non-defendants

[Kalriath]

They're going solely for Antivirus vendors for some reason - Microsoft's on there because of OneCare, not Windows. Not sure on Novell.

Also the NSA is likely immune on National Security grounds.

Re:Entire model is broken

[mhall119]

There is also money in the information, like the information you feed to a fabricator to actually make the things you want. Future economies will not be based on selling widgets, but rather on selling widget designs.

Re:"competition" is not a "goal" of economics.

[plasmacutter]

I'm defining "our" as the US where I live, where the cost of living is much higher.

The same economic policies were used against us by britain and europe when we were developing. A sound policy which gave limited protection to business and at the time the labor standards which resulted in a consuming "middle class" gave rise to our economic power.

The problems with less prosperous nations are not US trade policies, but their own domestic policy and in many cases political unrest. (please don't apply the fallacy of composition to this statement. This is very different at the level of individual people and families)