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Bittorrent and uTorrent Sued For Patent Violations
dutchwhizzman writes "Bittorrent and uTorrent have been sued for using certain techniques in their clients and the bittorrent protocol. From the article it appears technologies are being used that were submitted in a 1999 patent that was subsequently approved in 2007. This itself is not uncommon, but given the technologies involved, HTTP could very well be prior art, or it could violate at least part of the same protocol."
Software patents need to die. End of story.
Would this not also include Blizzard and their new way of updating/downloading games? They would seem to have far more wealth to go after than either of the two torrent providers.
I have a torrent... never mind!
When will we stop putting up with all this prior art nonsense. We'll be sued for breathing methods and the way we click our mouse next.
End of Line.
....like someone has a patent on the internet.
They must be pretty confident that they'd win.
This is a real problem - much bigger than the usual story we hear about some big corporation maybe having to pay some amount of money.
Software, to be useful, *has to* be compatible with other software - exactly compatible for data formats, and a degree of similarity is needed in terms of interface and behaviour.
This is the real problem, and it can't be fixed by "reform" or higher standards (which are much talked about but never come).
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Harm_to_standards_and_compatibility
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Interoperability_exceptions
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Harm_with_neither_litigation_nor_threats
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patenting_around_what_will_become_essential
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Every company and community sued needs to follow a simple manta: WWLD?
That is What Would Larry (Ellison) Do (if sued over bullshit)?
He'd probably grind the patent troll into the ground until the CEO's family personally suffered for three generations.
The only solution to this behavior is to use the courts in such a way that patent trolls become personally afraid that someone is going to go so hard after their throat in court that even after they want to settle, they'll keep litigating until the troll is bankrupt and then go after the management's families and pick their bones clean in court.
If you're writing software and get into trouble with patents, bad luck. You're screwed. But here is what I'd do:
1.) Immediately release the software under GPL.
2.) Deny any responsibility for the software; claim some unknown software company in an East European country develops it and you just distributed it. Halt the distribution, but make sure that some strawman in besaid country continues to distribute it.
3.) Publish every letter sent to you about the alleged patent infirngement on blogs, tell your customers that they might have to pay patent fees and should ask the suing party about that.
4.) Move to another country, continue to produce a commercial variant of your software but silently distribute good versions of it on every torrent site in the whole world.
5.) Write bad product reviews about the products of the suing company on every fucking blog you can access or register using TOR.
The Canadian Microsoft, that is, so once removed and much harder to notice. After all, what happens in Canada stays in Canada.
... to infringe ("violate") *part* of a patent claim. Each claim at the end of a patent is separate. You either do everything one of the claims describes or you are missing something. If you do everything, you infringe the claim. If you are missing even one piece, you do not infringe.
HTTP may be prior art, but it is only *invalidating* prior art if it does everything that is described in the claims. New inventions necessarily build on old ones. There is nothing legally improper about claiming an invention that is based on something old. It is called an *improvement.*
The only one who created something from nothing was God. Everyone else has to work with what is already here.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
If this case is successful, I would think that many "managed file transfer" vendors and "WAN optimization" vendors might find themselves served next. In these industries, it is quite common to "serve up media files" using a file system, an optimized protocol and a separate database full of file information.
Next time, please at least say who is suing them in the summary.
I8-D
Bittorrent and uTorrent are sued for using techniques in their clients and the bittorrent protocol
I'm constantly using this technique called "breathing". Please don't sue me.
This is even worse than the usual bad patents I've seen. They have 20 pages of a very detailed description of their "preferred configuration". However, they say that it shouldn't be taken as a literal description of the system and that their patent is intended to be very broad. The claims are ridiculously broad and don't even reference the description of the system (apparently they were serious when they said that the description wasn't intended to be illustrative of their claims). The claims don't even make up half a page of text.
Look, I don't know much about patents, but surely there's no way such a bad patent can stand up in court... Can it?
Software patents need to die. End of story.
I can't access the article but, if I'm understanding this correctly, the part about the protocol is worse than a software patent. Protocol patents are very bothersome to me because in my mind they totally destroy the chance a competitor has to interface with your product. And in doing so it really hinders innovation and integration. It's very easy to see how a simple ploy can result in people being "bought in" to a line of products even though a better competing line may come along. This vendor lock-in or competitor lockout (whatever you want to call it) is a very serious problem in my line of work (ever had your boss demand that you "decrypt" .doc files from years ago?).
... but I think there have been many examples where this simply hasn't happened. Even now people don't realize/recognize this problem when they look for a solution to their needs. Massive companies seem fine with using proprietary protocols because they are of higher quality than the more open competition. I've seen cost/benefit studies where openness (protocol or software) doesn't even factor into the final scores of the products.
Now, the common counter argument is that people would simply just buy products without patent laden protocols
I think a good concrete example would be if Samuel Morse had patented not only the telegraph machine (his particular device design) but also the Morse Code protocol and sued anybody using that alphabet to send messages. Do you think telegraphy would have progressed as quickly if that had been the case?
My work here is dung.
The things mentioned are just programs ... a description of a process. Wouldn't they have to sue the individual users? After all, you can't be sued for having a copy of a patent. You have to have some sort of implementation to infringe.
file a patent for "patent filing" process. Then I could sue anyone filing patents...
This thing of patenting is getting more and more annoying now.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Yes, there is lots of waffle in the Patent - this is actually good as it is often unusual for patents to offer this level of detail.
No, it has no reference to HTTP itself, which is a point to point data transmission system.
The claim to break/ challenge is the first one; all the others are dependent claims and moreover the dependent claims would all be regarded as obvious to someone with ordinary skill in the art (of IT).
1. A media distribution system, comprising: a media file database configured to store media files, wherein one or more of the media files have been compressed prior to storage in the media file database; a computing device configured to receive user requests for delivery of the one or more of the media files stored in the media file database, the computing device further configured to: identify average networkthroughput between computing device and the requesting users; and route the user requests for delivery of the requested one or more media files to a distribution server capable of servicing the user requests based upon at least the average networkthroughput; and a distribution server coupled to the media file database, the distribution server configured to simultaneously deliver a single copy of the requested one or more of the media files identified in the routed user requests to the requestingusers in less-than-real-time, wherein the distribution server automatically adjusts delivery of the requested one or more media files to the requesting users based on current average network throughput between the distribution server and the requesting users.
One way of breaking the claim is that the patent is only for 1 media file database and one distribution server in claim 1, and a second media file database and distribution server in claim 14. None of the actual claims are for 'n' media file databases and 'm' distribution servers where n != m or n equal to m and greater than two. If this idea is novel I've just published it and officially open source it ;-)
Incidentally, saying in the description that their patent is intended to be very broad don't make it so; only the specific claims matter, so you're right in that the initial waffle is not helpful to their patent.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Tranz-Send Broadcasting Network Management: Scott Redmond (President/CEO)
'Redmond, Scott D Patent Owner`
'Patents by assignee `
VCs include: ING Barings; Trans Cosmos USA; Bay Angels; CrossFire Ventures; FatPipe Partners link
Or that his name would still be so well known? Just imagine if what's-his-name - you know, the web guy - had attached his name to HTTP. I'd remember who he is without having to look it up via the web.
I think I comprehend your point but I must be missing your joke. I know who Sir Tim Berners-Lee is and every time he postulates about the future, it's a Slashdot headline. If you're referring to the licensing of the Gopher protocol (a topic I've often commented on) I can assure you nobody remembers nor cares who it was that attached their names to the Gopher protocol. All that's left of it is a torrent archive (that my recent findings picked out three hilariously old trojan/dialers from).
Perfect example of the futility and backwardness of patenting protocols. Quality debates aside, it would have been nice to get an earlier start on the early growing pains of the web.
My work here is dung.
Yeah, all file transfer protocols developed in the '70s that do exactly what this patent claims. This is the reason why patents and software need a divorce.
This suit isn't about money, exactly. Bittorrent, Inc. are not your typical "deep pockets", so it's not as though the troll hopes to make a lot of money by suing them. In fact, the only way this makes business sense is as an obstructive competition tactic. Let's see... who would stand to benefit by tripping up Bittorrent, Inc.? Hmmm...
If someone were to follow the money, it wouldn't surprise me much to find out that our good friends in the old-fashioned media offered to pick up the legal tab to prosecute this. That's about the only thing that makes sense.
a comment from the torrentfreak article is worth repeating here.
"Nothing to see here, move along. This patent describes the YMODEM/XMODEM protocol nicely, which was developed back in the '70s, and could be very easily refuted by this example of prior art."
Napster however was releases in june 1999, and this patent is from april
But which country in "everywhere else" has the wherewithal to accept 300 million refugees from the U.S. software patent regime?
It describes a "server/client" media file transfer system, NOT a Peer to Peer file transfer system such as bit torrent.
“A server/client media file distribution system is provided in which the server system is adapted to receive transmission requests from clients, status information from a network, and protocol information from each client,” company writes in the patent abstract.
“The server, based upon this information, adaptively transmits a given media file stored therein to one or more clients using the optimal transmission speed and/or network protocol based on the network status information and protocol information,”
I don't see a server here. So, nothing here. Move along.
That is interesting in that it seems to fail basic philosophy. A description of something is not the thing itself.
A computer program is a description of a process written in a programming language. But the program also embodies the process, as a computer can perform the process by executing the program.
There is a reason IBM isn't sued by small fry patent trolls. Or medium fry, either.
Hey look, it's another patent troll. I did a bit of research about the guy behind it (Scott Redmond) and it appears he has gone from a failed innovator to get-rich-quick troll. Sad. http://www.trademarkia.com/company-redmond-scott-3344589-page-1-2
I've come to the conclusion that intellectual property is the last thing of value that the United States has in a global economy. The manufacturing sector is a shadow of what it once was, the real estate sector has crashed tremendously, and exports are at a low. Now they have to bully everyone else into enforcing these patents, copyrights, and trademarks in order to stifle competition... It's a sad state of affairs.
Nobody ever bothers to actually link the thing, so here is patent 7,301,944.
The only independent claim is:
Bold parts most important. Note that the "device configured to receive user requests for delivery" must also "route the user requests for delivery". In the bittorrent protocol, the client makes the decision on which peer to make a "request for delivery" to (from the list provided by the tracker), and the peer they request the file chunk from does not "route the user request".
Sadly, our court system has reached the point where defending against such a blatantly invalid use of the patent would still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it would be easier to close up shop than to prove fundamental operation of the bittorrent protocol is not even close to the claimed patent.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
or any other part except the CLAIMS; the rest is irrelevant except to allow someone of ordinary skill in the art to understand what is claimed.
Here's an attempt at shoehorning Bittorrents operation to fit the claims, where I've perhaps stretched things further than a court would
1. A media distribution system, comprising:
Yes, BitTorrent is a media distribution system ....
a media file database configured to store media files, wherein one or more of the media files have been compressed prior to storage in the media file database;
Yes, Bit torrent has a media file "database" assuming a file system is a database - however one assumes the files are not compressed as they are stored in a normal file system
a computing device configured to receive user requests for delivery of the one or more of the media files stored in the media file database,
This could describe the server you get a torrent file from, or the seeder of the torrent. lets assume the seeder as the rest works better this way...
the computing device further configured to: identify average network throughput between computing device and the requesting users;
this again could describe the seeder... it doesn't directly identify network throughput, but it could be argued that it does so by the amount of the file it is able to send each requesting user...
and route the user requests for delivery of the requested one or more media files to a distribution server capable of servicing the user requests based upon at least the average networkthroughput;
Bittorrent routes the requests for parts of the media files to a multiplicity of distribution servers, perhaps fitting the plurality of frames in claim 2.
and a distribution server coupled to the media file database, the distribution server configured to simultaneously deliver a single copy of the requested one or more of the media files identified in the routed user requests to the requesting users in less-than-real-time,
The seeder (distribution server) delivers the file to multiple users in less-than-real-time; however it does this by sending parts of the file to different clients and each client networks together to get a whole set.
wherein the distribution server automatically adjusts delivery of the requested one or more media files to the requesting users based on current average network throughput between the distribution server and the requesting users.
Again the distribution server (seeder) adjusts delivery by sending the client a list of other peers also downloading that file so that clients can download parts from each other through multiple connections.
Bit-torrent is a piss-poor fit to the patent really, but lawyers could stretch a point. You never know with these crazy patent lawyers.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The patent's abstract (a bit long to quote here) sounds like Akamai's business plan.
The patent was filed in October 1997. According to the company's history Akamai's founders were finalists in a 1998 MIT competition. Given that these things don't take shape instantaneously, there's a fighting chance they've got some documentation of prior art that would shoot down this claim forthwith.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
Everyday , there is at least one software patent troll. Software couldn't be patentable. As many told, and demonstrated , software is math. When the patent is too vague it's merely a vague idea how to perform operations in software, so should we patent ideas ? Sure not, well until now. Another fact is that software is way too complicated for lawyers, keep in mind that lawyers are not even required to pass (math) SAT tests. How can a judge can give an appropriate answer ? This is simple , he (she) simply CAN NOT. Now , the US patent office : they are entitled to register software patents, so the patent office earns a lot of money issuing dubious patents.
There are also some folks who think it may be bad to eliminate software patents, obviously most of them are not in the software industry, I think most of the developers infringed many patents in their career simply because they didn't know the existence of these patents and/or because these patents described obvious ideas.
If we take the case of i4i patent vs Microsoft, basically i4i said Microsoft infringed their patent because MS stored and processed documents in XML. So what is the problem ? XML is a open standard, derived itself from SGML , and it is a very simple idea to store and process documents in XML.
With this BitTorrent case, the claims are also extremely vague, and could be applied for a number of protocols as well. Try to explain this to a judge accustomed to handle divorces, car thefts, etc. No way ! Of course great corporations use also this patent system to block their competitors and/or grab money, think to Oracle/Google: the judge was given some basic introduction to Java, however after his training he admitted he didn't know what a class was.
The conclusion is NO SOFTWARE PATENTS
Claim 1: A media distribution system, comprising:
a media file database configured to store media files, wherein one or more of the media files have been compressed prior to storage in the media file database;
a computing device configured to receive user requests for delivery of the one or more of the media files stores in the media file database, the computing device further configured to: (identify average network throughput between computing device and the requesting users; and route the user requests for delivery of the requested one or more media files to a distribution server capable of servicing the user requests based upon at least the average network throughput;) and
a distribution server coupled to the media file database, the distribution server configured to simultaneously deliver a single copy of the requested one or more of the media files identified in the routed user requests to the requesting users in less-than-real-time, wherein the distribution server automatically adjusts delivery of the requested one or more media files to the requesting users based on current average network throughput between the distribution server and the requesting users.
That isn't quite BitTorrent. Specifically, I don't think BitTorrent shapes its routing from the server-side based on "average network throughput between computing device and the requesting users". Nor is the system attached to a database configured to store media files - at least, I hope filesystems in general don't count.
It seems that governments are using the term Terrorist more and more often to get bad laws introduced because they know that no one would accept them otherwise. Maybe it's time we started using the term as well to make them feel uncomfortable about letting these absurd patent cases happen.
These patent trolls should be referred to with a new term like Software Terrorists. The term does fit since they are using fear and intimidation to scare and coerce small time and other developers from providing real innovation in the software industry. The fear of high legal fees, unreasonably high penalties, and loss of years of honest work can be devastating. Especially in a case like this where the patent bomb went off after 10 years of work!
I don't believe the patent laws will ever change as they are now since there is too much money to be lost by lawyers, politicians, and the trolling companies. We need to start using harsher language to make them look like the dangerous thing they are in the public's eye.
It took that long to get patented, and we know that utorrent and bittorrent use those, but came out before said 2007 approval....so how does that work?
I mean if someone applies for a patent, and does not get it, in the mean time someone else develops similar technology and uses that tech, is it really
infringing, as the courts have been really slow to put the patent through, and it is possible that more then one person has a similar idea, so when scientist #2 looks at the patent list and sees nothing about his tech (as scientist#1 has still no approval) scientist #2 thinks the cost is clear, is it really his fault that the patent office is so f*ckin slow??? is there no law for this type of situation as well, I mean it is surely not the first time something like this happened??
I settle for head shots of the patent trolls and their attorneys. But that would be illegal, so I guess we all just have to suck it down...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
There is only one independent claim, and it suffers from a huge divided infringement problem. Not all portions of the claimed system are under the control of one actor, and there is no contractual relationship between the various separate actors in the system. This can't possibly be infringed. But, it will cost a lot of money to prove that i.e. this is typical troll behavior.
Really we shouldnt have done this in the first place. I propose we transfer all rights for bittorrent and mutorrent to Tranz-Send. That includes all responsibility for them. Then we just let the telecomms sue them into nonexistance, force them to sell the patent for a pittance, while humiliating him and pointing out the illogic in our current patent system, all while stripping the ill-gotten gains from the exploiting tranz-send. Its a great idea. The people love a Seven in One Stroke, and thats exactly what we could get. Legal channels sure dont do jack about it, so we may as well start getting creative.
+ Mr. Redmond hold's an extensive issued patent and pending patent portfolio
of historically seminal patents.
He's obviously not good at precision or accuracy. And I'm not quite sure what you do with a portfolio of pending patents other than trolling.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Having just taken the time to read the patent and being quite familiar with how BitTorrent works, I have to say that none of the claims in the patent describe the BitTorrent protocol or client in the slightest. My prediction for how this will end: This is going to get laughed out of court when the plaintiff can't produce an expert witness with any credibility at all who will agree that BitTorrent even slightly resembles their claims. They'll either be unable to line up expert witnesses or they'll have someone highly suspect who makes a combination of false and inaccurate statements.
The patent, in summary, is for a media server which takes requests from clients for media files and then serves them back at a bit-rate which is based on the available bandwidth using information from the client. All the claims are variations on this with things like multicasting, encryption, digital watermarking, payment, and the like mixed in. Now, this is a silly patent for several reasons but the biggest is that an alternate summary could be "Almost like RealAudio server, but with no streaming." So they could probably get their patent invalidated due to prior art since I believe that several of the streaming servers which existed at that time could be used for non-streaming purposes too.
But what's more immediately relevant is that none of this is anything like BitTorrent. In the BitTorrent protocol, a client asks the server for a list of other clients for the same file and the server delivers it. Then the clients swap pieces amongst themselves. In BT, there are no media files on the server, the server doesn't receive any transmission rate information from the client, and the server doesn't deliver any media files to the client. In their system, there is no peer-to-peer communication, the client cannot ask for or receive a list of other clients, and the media files are only delivered from the server directly to the client via either unicast or multicast. So what does this patent have to do with BitTorrent? Bugger all, that's what.
The only question in my mind about the outcome of this is whether or not the plaintiff will have to pay the defendant's legal fees. I sure hope so, because this lawsuit is nonsense. It's just an attempt to extract money from a more successful company.
Actually, my reading of the first claim is as follows:
A Media-Server that knows about media, gets a client interested in receiving media.
Based on network performance (and other characteristics) the server picks a Distribution-server (presumably network-optimal server for the client) to transmit the file to the client.
The Distribution-server transmits the file.
Why Bit Torrent is safe: In this claim 1 of the patent, the Media-Server determines who will fulfil a clients request.
Bit torrent (my understanding) is this.
A MediaServer knows about the media (torrent) gets a client interested in receiving media.
A MediaServer transmits a list of other clients similarly interested (leeches) and other completed clients (seeds - Equivalent of Distribution Server for the patent claim) interested in receiving media.
A Client negotiates with available seeds and leeches to have them transmit the media.
The important difference is of course the MediaServer does not dictate who does what. It is all negotiated between the different clients. The MediaServer is really just a register of what is going on, it doesn't decide a single thing.
I think Mr Redmond needs a lot more respect. Al Gore even stole one of his biggest inventions a few years back. At least give Mr Redmond the respect you would give an Uninformed Luddite. Thank you for caring.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
With how busy and successful hacker groups have been these days, this seems like a dumb move for this company...