Slashdot Mirror
Who Invented the Linux-Based Wireless Router?
mtaht writes "I've just had the interesting experience of being deposed to talk about one of the first embedded, Linux-based, wireless routers. Our (free!) 1998 publication of how to make one predates patent #7035281, filed September 13, 2000, by someone else. Their patent was recently granted and is now being disputed in court, in part using our how-to as an example of prior art. The lawsuit continues; the case goes before a judge shortly, and a jury trial if necessary is scheduled for the spring. I find myself plagued with the question: So... who invented the embedded Linux based wireless router? What relevance does 'who' have, when there is such an enormous confluence of ideas from thousands of people? What constitutes invention, anyway?"
Please read how to do it right:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/How_to_read_patents_and_gather_prior_art
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
That's who.
I thought we just resolved this in the last story. Vint Cerf invented it and the lawsuits are his fault.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Does it have Linux on it? --no--> Install Linux. Is Linux installed? --no--> Modify Linux until you can install it. ----> Install Linux.
It's Linux. Installing it is always obvious.
Every new platform (almost by definition of the term "platform") allows it to be married to myriad other technologies. Unfortunately the USPTO does not seem to understand that each one of these secondary permutations does not (should not) constitute "invention".
But ultimately -- the answer, like most answers to legal questions, isn't a matter of who's right and who's wrong, or even "what is the truth?". The answer depends on who has the combination of legal-budget and willpower to pursue the patent.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Do they have to prove exact prior art, if they can prove that the differences between the prior art and the patent are obvious to a practitioner of the art?
A patent really should only cover non-obvious extensions of existing ideas. As the guy himself states, there was nothing in what he did that was particularly non-obvious to any person who did networking at the time, so it's silly that it should even be patentable, let alone an example of prior art. Rather, their effort just happened to occur at a point in time where wireless networking was just being introduced.
So why on earth should merely combining the words "embedded", "Linux", "wireless" and "router" make something patentable? These are not novel combinations that required a leap of creative insight, but rather extremely straightforward and obvious combinations.
Our submitter is doing the right thing here; testifying against a company that tried to patent an already freely available idea. No patent should be allowed to protect this device's software. The hardware is a separate issue. Thanks for doing the right thing!
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
It depends on what they're claiming.
I don't have time to read TFA or TFP, but I'm guessing that their implementation does not fit entirely within your list of suggestions.
If they're claiming everything, they were probably wrong in the first place, since your description would have relied on a lot of stuff that was public knowledge anyway.
But most patents are overbroad and depend on prior patents and common knowledge. It will probably come down to a detail that nobody has included before.
was this story designed to create an infinite loop in readers brains or what?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
"A Method and Process of using Linux to do Stuff with Things."
World domination follows . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
After we sold that company - and the purchaser tanked, we started up Fireplug Computers Inc. doing Linux for embedded devices, including "Thin-Linux" which was specifically oriented to being a router. I ran a version of that on a 486 system until it finally died earlier this year.
We had wireless capabilities in this, with drivers for a couple of the then available wireless chips.
Fireplug was sold to Lineo Inc. in 1999 - and I'm fairly sure that Lineo did some work on Linux wireless too.
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
I say we find everyone who submitted patent ideas before 2002 and buy them a drink.
Nothing's been more of a driver of IT support than those awful little boxes. Thanks for the job security guys!
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
There were 802.11 networks serving whole cities by the late '90s. All you needed was a high gain dish and line-of-sight. These guys were up and running in 1999. Every one of them had some form of *nix based "wireless router" setup. My own was FreeBSD, so clearly that has no relevance to a patent for something as brilliant as an integrated Linux wireless router.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Certainly not the very first ever made, but likely the first mainsteam implementation that was available.
I had a 2U 386SX 16Mhz Workstation with full length ISA 900MHz WaveLAN card, that ran LRP off 3.5" 1.44MB.
Host name was 'Brain-Damage'. Some of the first LRP development was done on that back in 1997.
The boys over in Latvia that went on to form RouterBoard were doing much more then me with wireless but I'm not sure if it was with Linux at the time.
Dave
So why on earth should merely combining the words "embedded", "Linux", "wireless" and "router" make something patentable?
Ah, but now that you have combined these words, you are infringing on my copyright to the phrase "embedded Linux wireless router"! I demand reparations for this flagrant misappropriation of my intellectual property!
(Sure, I'm being silly, but I'm also trying to point out the inherent ridiculousness of these attempts at "owning" ideas.)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
whatever the judge at the highest level court that will hear your case says it is.
I did it.
Achille Talon
Hop!
The patent in question seems to be for something specific and somewhat different from a regular ol' Linux wireless router, like we all use. Particulars from the patent text (all emphasis mine):
There are other particulars, but this seems more like something to provide large-scale outdoor wireless infrastructure than simple home routing. The diagrams also show little pictures of houses being served by multiple routers as described in the patent.
Breakfast served all day!
It's ridiculous that something like this could even be patented in the first place. Routers existed. Wireless existed. How obvious is a wireless router?
How can someone get a patent on an obvious implementation of a new standard, in this case 802.11? I wonder if Anthony Spearman or Andrew Tompkins had any access or input into the standard? I wonder if they were part of the standards process but realized they couldn't patent the standard so the patented the implementation.
a TIFF? Seriously?
via Patent Storm:
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
we did that at ReseauCitoyen.be several years ago. At that time there was nothing nor on the Internet nor elsewhere... We never claimed invention for that as this was obvious for us who where in the field... But we build some devices... We had some design published as public domain ones in hope to see them builded by corporations. And finally that was the case. So I can not understand that someone is now claiming a patent on such kind of ideas... PS: I'm not an english language native, so forgive some faults in my wording!
Submitter: you're doing the right thing. Now, the smart thing would be getting paid off by the company doing the suing. If they have teams of lawyers, surely they have 30-40k for your consulting services?
Just an FYI. You just tainted your testimony. Anyone reasonably worth his/her salt as a lawyer looks online to watch discussion of it by witnesses. If there is enough "chatter" your testimony can be thrown into a very poor light. Remember, if you are an expert, why are you asking a bunch of internet board posters what you need to tell a judge?
Wasn't it Al Gore?
Before there was a wi-fi standard Xircom invented and sold the first wireless router.
So the idea of using Linux as the embedded OS, should be a non-issue. If there is already a patented product doing this, and simply changing what software OS is used? So that prior patent should be used to invalidate this patent. I mean come on, adding the word Unix is the only thing the their patent application has. I have high hopes that this patent will be tossed.
All ideas, novel or not, are combination of prior ideas. And are certainly expressed in combination of existing words and shapes.
The fundamental challenge for the patent office, and those who are against patents, is that criteria like obviousness, similarity (need to prove assimilation to prior arts,) creativeness, etc. are fundamentally subjective. One could claim Einstein's Theory of Relativity is trivial and obvious, after hearing the details of the Theory; yet it was Einstein, and not billions of people before him in human history, that nailed down the Theory.
I don't think non-subjective definitions of these terms exist. At the end, these come down to who can argue better on a case by case basis.
The ampr.org domain dates to April 1988. Phil Karn's KA9Q NOS claims to date back to 1985. I know I established a routed connection from the east bay to Cupertino via a KA9Q "router" in San Jose using 1200 baud modems on 2m VHF radio around 1990 or 1991, and I was just repeating work that everyone else was doing.
Temkin
I tend to prefer reserving the term "invention" for where the bulk of the work is totally new and "innovation" for where the bulk of the work is simply a refinement on something that already exists. (Under this definition, there is very little in the way of true invention, which is actually quite realistic. True inventors are extremely rare.)
However, these are not the legal definitions. In this situation, it is the legal definitions that matter, no matter how anyone else defines the terms or how rational or irrational the legal definitions may be. (Obviously, if my definitions were used, the patent system would not have moved past the four digit range.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This is exactly why one should keep their mouth shut until the case is over.
In our economy: Invention is the right to a revenue stream if you can afford patent law litigation.
Wow. So whoever is first to put an operating system on a computer gets to patent that? That somehow that combination is magical and to be serious again for a second "no one in the industry would have thought that doing such a thing would be obvious"? No, wrong, fail. Die software patents. Just die. I don't care if they are in Linux's favor or not. All of them need to die, and most or all "normal" patents too.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
I have said it before, and I will say it again. Those companies providing hardware intended to run linux, can simply offer hardware only. Provide a bootstrap CD/USB key with software to install a linux derivate, and you have a nat workaround for patent trolls. An automatic download/(cross)compile software suite wouldn't be too hardto create.
Yep. He's looking for prior art that pre-dates him, and he's asking how to prove and attribute prior art to someone.
For this, there are some real common mistakes to avoid:
* You have to find prior art for the claims, not the summary
* You have to find prior art for *all* the claims
* Good news is that acceptable forms of prior art include ads, manuals, magazine articles...
It's not rocket science, but a lot of news stories like this end up wasting people's energy because people contribute their knowledge without knowing these simple rules, and it's all or mostly useless.
As someone who's spent time scraping slashdot stories with 200+ comments for possible *useful* prior art, I can tell you that a lot of people don't know these basic rules.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
In 1998/1999 I was using AT&T WaveLAN connection over a 1/2 km distance connecting one Linux Box to a Linux router/firewall. I think that constitutes prior art and that was "old" technology at that time. Check the linux kernel drivers for pre-2000.
It is quite a narrow patent that seems to be looking to provide a spoof internet connection to wireless devices when the can connect to the claimed device but there is no available Internet connection.
I have no idea how anyone could possibly infringe this patent, given that the last-but-two and last-but-one clauses of claim 1 are virtually unintelligible. The later independent claims are even stranger and more obscure.
IAAL!
(But as a patent attorney in Europe, I think that the USPTO and US patent law is strangely weird and broken.)
Time is life: speed saves it. LJK Setright
There, now it's settled. Please remove your post from slashdot.
And in the minds of the Patent Office that's somehow Really Different...
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
How does that qualify for invention at all. Routers are in general devices performing specific packet routing functions controlled by an embedded operating system. As long as this original design is followed the choice of operating system is no different that choosing the brand of capacitators. So how is this patentable or inventable at all?
A while back, I signed onto the peer-to-patent website for awhile, and tried to add some prior art references. I tried to refer the patent examiners to a Communications of the ACM article from 20 years ago, and they said they didn't have access to that and I'd have to get them a PDF(!) Similarly they couldn't seem to come up with a copy of Karrels & McKusic et al. to see what was in 4.3BSD a quarter century ago. I mean, they ought to have a library, right? As a public service, I got an ACM membership again for a year so I could pull down the ACM article and give them a copy...
How are they going to recognize a rehash of old ideas if they don't even have the basic reference materials?
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Lawyerfag here, claims 2 & 3 are identical (they meant to cover both inbound & outbound packets but covered outbound twice). You would think that at $500 an hour they will pay attention to stuff like that.
Unless the person applying for the patent wrote in the additions to Linux to begin with, wouldn't the fact that the functionality exists be proof of prior art? In other words, Linux has features included for the purpose of being used. Even if the features were used in an unusual combination, the fact that the features are able to be used in such a combination meant that the authors intended for there to be such flexibility for that to happen, and therefore even if not physically done before, at least the general idea and concept had been thought of and implemented in code... therefore prior art.
I understand there's probably more to the patent, such as hardware design and such, but I just find it interesting that somebody could patent, even in part, the functionality in Linux.
Just remembering and poking around, I found these guys that were running wireless Linux routers in October 98.
The Open-WRT project was soliciting ideas at least in 1999.
Someone at HP was working on this in 1996. I don't know how far they got before 1998.
I'm suspecting there were other projects back then making good progress. But I can't tell how applicable these are. The HP project is sure interesting.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You can invalidate one claim (as it was written) by submitting prior art about that claim.
"as it was written" because the patent holder gets the chance to reword that claim and resubmit.
Invalidating one claim can solve your problems, but patents are written like thickets, so there are often many claims that cover a real world product.
1. A big box ...
2. The machine from claim #1, with a tap
3. The machine from claim #1, with a basin
4. The machine from claim #2, connected to tubing
5. The machine from claim #4, where the tubing is waterproof
6.
When you build a house or a petrol pump and someone says you infringe a patent, it's usually more than one claim.
Partial invalidation is possible, and might be enough to solve your problem, but it's a broad task. It's not the "Hey, this looks like the thing I saw in 2003" task that many people think it is.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
I wonder if anyone has patented running Linux on a toaster...
www.routerboard.com, www.mikrotik.com. Their RouterOS is very similar to what other companies do for specific applications. They were founded in 95 and produced their first hardware products in 02. http://www.routerboard.com/about.html
we wouldn't be in a predicament like this if patents weren't granted for idiotic inventions.
somebody needs to patent patents; with the way they've been approving EVERYTHING that comes through it's bound to be accepted and then we can run the patent office into the ground. it's just not useful anymore; it serves no purpose and is a hinderance to the advancement of ANY technology.
I built my first Linux wireless router in 1994 or 1995, but it probably doesn't apply. I didn't use 802.11, but rather AX.25 over amateur radio. I wasn't alone, or even a pioneer. Alan Cox did a lot of work in that area, as I remember.
I don't know if you still need prior art, but here is an email I wrote back in 1998 about the wireless router I built using a palm-sized libretto. I believe there are even pictures somewhere. This was the first email, and I completed the scripts shortly after. It was back in the day when the "netwave" adapters were a common wireless adapter. I would go to meetings, drop the libretto in a corner of the room and either connect it to ethernet or a modem (yes, back then i dialed up) and have a wireless router...
---
From XXX Mon Mar 30 07:39:01 1998
To: YYY
Subject: If you have the time...
Cc:
Bcc:
X-Attachments:
In-Reply-To:
References:
X-Eudora-Signature:
[different material deleted]
On a different note... I was playing with booting Linux on the Libretto. I trimmed all the win95 stuff and partitioned the drive to 400meg for the win95, and the rest for Linux. The netwave adapter works in the \
libretto under win95, and the name of the machine is 'monopoly' (under win95), and 'libretto' under Unix.
The next 'trick' is booting RH 5.0 install **without** the floppy (which is a pcmcia). I did this, buy loading win95, then using the 'old' scsi bus toaster, put the redhat install stuff in /redhat/dosutils, then \
booted DOS. Then I did a 'loadlin vmlinux initrd=initrd.gz'. That booted Linux nicely, but the initrd.gz which I got from some German web page, did not seem to have the right pcmcia built. A alt-f4 (or whatever\
shows you the text output during a redhat install) showed the pcmcia modules did not work.
So.... I think the loadlin method will work... so long as I can get a ramdisk which has the right pcmcia stuff. If you happen to be playing with linux on laptops, can you see what it would take to create a initrd\
that has the right pcmcia stuff? If your own laptop hacking does not lead you that direction, thats fine, but if you are in the neighborhood...
In the end, I would like to make the libretto the netwave hub for ip masq, and dialup service. Then we could bring it on trips, and provide networking...
I thought about this problem a lot about 25, 30 years ago. How do patent examiners recognize innovation unless they already know pretty much everything under current development in each particular field?
I think some ambulance-chaser-turned-congress-critter must have been thinking about the problem and recognized the implications back then, got himself on the right committee, and started deliberately underfunding the PTO and doing other things to keep them from bringing in competent examiners. I do recall reading about examiners complaining that they couldn't get enough other qualified examiners, and I'm pretty sure I recall reading about one who says they more or less decided that working the backlog down was more important that making sure the patents were valid.
I also spent a bit of time thinking about the database that the patent office should have been building. Too bad I spent more time finding problems than solving them, or even than talking about them.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
This is the most absurd piece of nonsense I have ever read.
If I used vxworks instead of linux does that infringe the patent? What about dos? Cisco Aironet gear was available commercially before 1998.
Cisco's own hardware does everything claimed years before the patent date except it used vxworks rather than linux. Is cutting costs by switching to a free operating system rather than paying wind river commercial royalties really a decision which merits a patent?
Perhaps a better question would be to ask how firms are allowed to use the legal system as a weapon and waste everyones time in such an absurd and selfish manner? Why are they allowed to be taken seriously?
It was a tiny little 386 box that I got when I upgraded someone elses computer to a 486. I used dial on demand to dial out on the modem to my local ISP and did DNS caching to really speed things up. It automatically compressed the data coming through the pipe too, so I could easily get a lot of speed from a 28K modem. I used that box for almost a decade, until I finally upgraded to a low power dedicated router that already ran Linux.
I didn't have any wireless at the time, but if I did, then I would have thrown a wireless interface into the same box and configured it to also connect to the Internet through the modem. It is a no-brainer. In fact, in a very real way, any linux box with a wireless device is already a wireless router, because it routes network requests through the wireless device.
Al Gore wanted the National Information Superhighway to have 65 bits. That can handle a lot of trucks.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I have been using Linux as router since 1996 because routing/firewalling was the only one thing Linux was good for Now you are saying that I have to respect your patent to use my FREE OS? Seriously, go to hell. My old i386 Intel-based router was even more embedded then any other modern wifi router.
I was just reading the patent. It's a strange one. I can't see any difference between claims #2 and #3.
It seems to be a software patent. The hardware elements claimed are all non-innovative.
I've started a wiki page for it here. Not sure if this will turn into an article about the court case or about the patent, but this case seems to provide interesting examples of a few topics.
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/US7035281
(I'm working on it now, but have to shutdown very soon. Should get to flesh it out tomorrow.)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
FREESCO could possibly pre date the patent dates and it does meet the basic criteria. It is also still in production and still running on a floppy.