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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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.