Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Moves To Patent Time-Based Software Licensing
theodp writes "Microsoft's Open Value Subscription offering didn't get the warmest reception. Nor did the follow-up announcement of Albany, a planned MS-Office Subscription Service. Now comes word from the USPTO that Microsoft feels it deserves a patent for the 'invention' of 'Time-Based Licensing,' which aims to make the traditional pay-once perpetual license model a thing of the past. Hey, if your customers were waiting nine years between OS upgrades, you'd try touting a three-year lease with a balloon buy-out payment, too!"
Microsoft feels it deserves a patent for the 'invention' of 'Time-Based Licensing,' which aims to make the traditional pay-once perpetual license model a thing of the past.
If they successfully patent time-based software licensing, wouldn't that make the traditional model a more viable solution?
Invention? What the heck are they talking about? My Matlab license has been time-based for years. I remember one day Matlab stopped working for me because I never got around to entering the new license number that our IT folks emailled me a few weeks earlier.
Name's flexlm. I see you're new around here, and determined to reinvent everything that was done on *nix 30 years ago.
But seriously--what here is new? Time based licensing has been around forever. Get the feeling they're just flailing around trying to find some revenue model that'll continue to extract money out of their customers? Microsoft's fundamental problem is that they've already sold many people what they need. XP works fine for me. I don't need Vista. Or 7. Office is fine. I don't care about the next round of bells and whistles. Most of what most of us do doesn't require them.
I don't really begrudge them some kind of revenue, but the more they demand, the better alternatives (OpenOffice, Google Docs, or hell, just buying a mac and being done with it) look.
Microsoft is effectively trying to patent the single most effective method of convincing ordinary users that alternatives are worth trying. That or piracy... Either way, it doesn't look like a very smart thing for MS to be doing.
People have options these days. I'm on the knife edge myself and Vista was annoying enough to have me considering a shift. Turn my software and OS into a ticking time bomb and I'm likely to jump ship. Microsoft is desperate to establish a revenue stream that requires no innovation or effort on their part. Vista falling on it's face confirmed for them the need for putting a gun to their users heads to keep money flowing.
It is (like every patent described on Slashdot) described poorly.
The patent is not a business-model patent for time-based licensing, its a technology patent for a specific scheme of enforcing time-based licensing rules.
The way its described in TFS there would certainly be massive prior art. I'm less sure about the particular scheme they're actually trying to patent.
Though, from the description in TFA, regardless of prior art, the scheme seems painfully obvious, so I wouldn't be surprised if existing time-based licenses use this enforcement scheme already.
I implemented this system in it's entirety with another engineer back about 6 years ago. Complete with the license server and the multiple parameters of the license. Is there a way to protest this being patented? It's still in daily use for my wife's company. They even get updates based on whether they have paid the license fee for the month.
Why bother
This patent is absurd.
Two things. One, this is not a patent. It's an application. You can put literally anything you want in a publication, and it will get published after 18 months, even though nobody's looked at it. I could file an application, and my first claim could be, "I claim a data storage device comprising a magnetic platter containing a plurality of magnetic bits, each bit configured to have two states, wherein each state represents alternately a 0 or a 1." That application would publish after 18 months with that claim, and everybody on /. would be hoppin' mad that I'd gotten a patent on the hard drive. And they would be completely wrong. Just because you ask for a particular, broad claim, doesn't mean you're going to get it.
Second, I doubt that you've done anything close to the analysis to even know if the filed claims are "absurd." What do the claims say? Do you know? What disclosure supports them? Does the disclosure have any limiting definitions or statements? Is there any file wrapper estoppel? Are the claims statutory subject matter under Bilski? I'm betting you don't know, which means you don't know if these claims are absurd or not.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
The patent is not a business-model patent for time-based licensing, its a technology patent for a specific scheme of enforcing time-based licensing rules.
No, it isn't. The claims of the patent are so ridiculously vague they would cover any such technology. Here's claim 1:
"1. A machine-implemented method for licensing a software product, the machine-implemented method comprising:generating a time-based license from among a plurality of types of time-based licenses in response to receiving a request for the time-based license, each of the plurality of types of time-based licenses having a plurality of configurable parameters, a combination of the plurality of types of time-based licenses and the plurality of configurable parameters being capable of accommodating a plurality of licensing business models; andsending the time-based license to an originating processing device of the request for the time-based license."
This patent would cover any automated software licensing business offering multiple types of limited time licenses, and is therefore a business model patent, not a technology one.
The more specific claims don't add much, either:
2 - some licenses are renewable
3 - supports a restriction on how many times the software can be reactivated
4 - product keys that can be used on a specified number of computers
5 - system for switching to a permanent license after a certain number of limited ones
6 - (I don't understand this claim; can somebody translate for me?)
7 - some licenses might not start immediately
8 - computer with the above scheme in memory
9-14 - covers a management user interface, really boring stuff
15 - above scheme stored on machine-readable media
16 - a command line interface to license management
17 - displaying a warning when the license is about to expire
18 - making the software stop working when the license expires
19 - informing the user how long the software will continue working for
20 - an api whereby a program can query whether it is licensed or not
Seriously. This is all _basic_ stuff, and covers just about every possible implementation, not just a single implementation of the idea.