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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.'"
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!
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
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.
I just entered "chmod 755" on a directory so other users could not modify my data. When can I expect the cease and desist order?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The lawsuit details are at
http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuit.asp?id=43183
In particular, the 22 defendants are
Symantec Corp.
Microsoft Corp.
AVG Technologies USA, Inc.
CA, Inc.
Check Point Software Technologies, Inc.
Comodo Group, Inc.
ESET, LLC
F-Secure, Inc.
iolo technologies, LLC
Kaspersky Lab, Inc.
McAfee, Inc.
MicroWorld Technologies, Inc.
NetVeda, LLC
Norman Data Defense Systems, Inc.
Novell Inc.
PC Tools, Inc.
PWI, Inc.
Sophos, Inc.
Sunbelt Software, Inc.
Trend Micro Incorporated
Velocity Micro, Inc.
Webroot Software, Inc.
yeah unfortunately that is exactly how the patent system works. Trademark is the only IP that you have to "protect" proactively or risk loosing.
With patents it is 100% acceptable to patent a bunch of ideas and then wait for someone else to develop them commercially, and then sue them and take the profits.
Apparently, a six year delay negates patent protection (the patentee has "unreasonably and inexcusably" delayed prosecution) under the same laches idea as made above.
Patent Law Blog (Patently-O): Laches and Equitable Estoppel.
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).
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.
Web Hosting: Unlimited storage and bandwidth: $5/month
With apologies to Jonathan Swift...Most of this crap seems to come out of LLCs (limited liability companies). That allows LLCs to go on wanton suing binges like this and never have to face the consequences of losing. However, if the principals had to personally face the consequences if their bogus patents are overturned by prior art, or they otherwise lose, it would be a lot more interesting. Patent suits by outfits which produce no products are just shakedowns. Lets treat them like shakedowns....
/end soapbox rant
Try it and lose, the corporate officers, the partners, the corporate account, and the stockholders (if any) should be held personally liable) not only for the legal fees of the successful defendants, but also for treble damages. No bankruptcies allowed. That would be real interesting. Wonder how many bogus suits we'd see then.
Legal changes required: 1) definition of a patent troll; 2) stripping patent troll LLC's of their protected liability status; 3) stripping them of bankruptcy eligibility, both as corporations as as individuals; and, 4) loser pays winner's legal fees + triple punitive damages. Better still, add patent-troll lawyers to the list of liable parties. Finally, make three time losers eligible for life in prison, and strip them of the right to file or own patents. This would have no effect on legitimate companies that produce real products, such as those being sued by patent-troll parasites.
Now, mod me into oblivion.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Seriously. Make a new user & group. Chown a binary to that user & group. chmod ug+s the binary. Ensure you have execution permissions. Run it. That pretty much satisfies everything in the patent - the program has a limited set of permissions associated with it that can be loaded on a per-program basis every time it executes.
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.
[Citation needed]
... Or at least a better understanding of what prior art is, before you go calling for competency hearings. The Unix permissions system doesn't disclose all of the limitations of the claimed invention, specifically "establishing a program authorizing information data structure for storing a plurality of authorization entries each indicating at least one of those computer resources and information processing related functions which may be used by an associated program;"
Unix works with user permissions... This is application permissions. You have rwx access to /user/[name]/library, but maybe you don't want /application/fubar to have full access there, even though you're the same user running it. Look, it's right here in the patent:
Thus, the present invention advantageously protects a user from any program to be executed. The present invention is particularly advantageous in light of current data processing practices where programs are obtained from a wide range of diverse, untrustworthy places such as computer bulletin boards or other users of unknown trustworthiness.
99% of what you read on Slashdot regarding patents is not just wrong, but the complete opposite of reality. Such as calling for competency hearings for a judge refusing to invalidate a patent on file permissions at application-specific levels because "unix was developed in 1969".
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,
And this should be all it takes
Novell Netware 286!
The date is 1981!
Once again it is up to Novell to save everyones ass!
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
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.
Real life is overrated.
I would have agreed with you, except for the existence of, and rapid improvement of, Fabbers. Give it a decade or two, and kids/techies will be downloading designs to build what they need, and only ordering raw materials from amazon. Since some fabbers are self-replicating, not even making fabbers will be a safe job/revenue stream. Given that mining and other resource harvesting is becoming more and more automated too, ideas are soon going to be all that's left.
Essentially, we're moving towards the society the (fictional) Krell had. They were smarter than us, and their own tech wiped them out. Let's see how we do. One thing's for sure: if we stick to the RIAA model, we're all screwed.