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."

Comments

Data formats are the biggest problem

[ciaran_o_riordan]

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

70s YMODEM/XMODEM protocol prior art

[lkcl]

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."

Re:Why is this still news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well how about the largest European countries? The trouble is that we have to adhere to US patent law if we want our software distributed in the US, so it doesn't matter much.

Re:Why is this still news?

[elastic_collision]

Not just countries but also industries have benefited from lack of protection against designs: http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture.html