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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."
... 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.
"In two-three countries, software patents are accepted". Everywhere else, they're not.
Specifically USA, South Korea and partially Japan. That's it.