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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.
That, or they think a judge would see through the evidence more quickly than a jury of "peers" who would be more easily flim-flammed by a fancy lawyer.
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.
"If you're innocent get a Judge, if you're guilty get a Jury"
Dave 1.0 says:
> what if someone wants to keep their software from being compatible with someone else's software for security or profit reasons?
If you want your servers to only talk to *your* software, then the hi-tech answer is: passwords.
"Security by obscurity" is the term for your proposed abuse of incompatibility :-)
(If you want to block compatibility for profit reasons, you either use passwords, or you're asking for a legalised monopoly and the answer is sorry, but just no.)
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He's a moron. He didn't read the patent at all. He just said "Suing BitTorrent? The only thing I know about torrents is they split files into chunks and do an error check on each chunk! XMODEM does that too! So clearly a patent on any part of BitTorrent must be on the only part I know anything about, so the patent MUST apply to XMODEM too!". The patent is about load balancing. BitTorrent load balances because you'll request chunks from peers that aren't busy, as opposed to ones that are saturating their link already. XMODEM doesn't do that at all. (How could it redirect the modem line to a different computer, anyways?)
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI