Google Granted Cloud OS Patent

An anonymous reader writes "This week, Google was given approval of a network OS patent that it applied for back in 2009. The design of the OS is built for 'providing an operating system over a network to a local device' to provision new versions of operating systems onto hardware devices. Filed in March 2009, the idea for Chrome OS was protected by Google early in the development process of the OS, but it was hardly new and unique, given the general description of its features in the patent itself. It is the best sign yet that Google is working toward seamless hardware and software experiences."

Comments

These type of patents are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I like what Google does... most of it anyway. But it's just as bad when Google gets a software patent as when anyone else does.

END - THEM - ALL

Re:These type of patents are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and no. Software patents are a weapon. Depending on who wields the weapon, it can be disastrous. Legally, software patents can be used defensively or offensively. I'd say the offensive users are worse than the defensive users. Overall the system is broken, but how "bad" it is that some company got a software patent -- well, that time will tell.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and no. Software patents are a weapon. Depending on who wields the weapon, it can be disastrous. Legally, software patents can be used defensively or offensively. I'd say the offensive users are worse than the defensive users. Overall the system is broken, but how "bad" it is that some company got a software patent -- well, that time will tell.

It's not a matter of who's wielding it. It's a matter of how it's wielded. Google's been pretty friendly but we can't pretend it's always going to be.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[gl4ss]

just publish what would count as prior art.

that's enough of a defence.

Legally, they're going to use the patents they can to fuck with other companies, "do no evil" or not. it's always offensive.

the only "good" they could use this for would be to use it as reasoning that sw patents are bad, as proof that the patent granting system is broken and that it should be abolished. apply in 2009 for a computer system booted from the network? they just took old concepts and put a buzzword of the 2009 on the title. that's fucking pathetic, but someone got a patent filing bonus for this. fuck 'em.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember Nokia used to be FOSS friendly too...
Now it's the one doing the damage (indirectly in this case)

Re:These type of patents are bad

[White Flame]

Google's been pretty friendly but we can't pretend it's always going to be.

Also, even if Google remains "friendly" regarding the patents it holds, there's no guarantee Google will be the one continuing to hold them. Patent war chests change hands with various sorts of mergers, splitoffs, lawsuits, stock deals, etc.

This is the reason benevolent dictatorship doesn't really exist: A benevolent leader would not subject his people to a dictatorship, especially as an entrenchment for those who would follow him. Like you say, just because the current state seems benevolent does not mean anything about how that power will be applied in the future.

Regardless, this thing should have died given netboot prior art.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[geekoid]

netboot is different.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[Riceballsan]

Indeed, the weapon analogy is a pretty solid one. It is more or less a similar concept (though massively different consiquences) to any other weapon. Say nukes as our example. I dislike the idea of nukes being out there at all. I am not happy or comfortable with the idea of the US having enough nukes to more or less destroy the planet. I would be less scared if say Canada or Switzerland had said nukes (though the idea of them seeking to get them would still be a bit unnerving). I would shit my pants if this full arsonal say fell into the hands of North Korea, Iran, Pakistan etc... and it would be even worse if it fell directly into the hands of say Al-Queda, the IRA or any other rogue terrorist group that has a history of attacks that specifically are going for the highest possible civilian count. Now that being said, in the case of patents, sadly with the broken system we currently have, someone is going to get the patent either way. Unless a major reform is done on the system, no matter how obvious, how trival or stupid a patent is, someone is going to land the patent, and there is a high chance that the court will grant them huge money even if the darn thing is both obvious and has been used for years. I can't directly condemn google for filing the patent, as the patent being granted to someone is inevitable, and there are worse hands it could have wound up in. I still do firmly believe that the entire patent system needs rewritten, but well that's just fantasy.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[davegravy]

That's like saying how bad a law is depends on how its used.

Laws which allow authorities unfettered rights to spy on citizens are good, provided the government doesn't use that power to persecute.

Wrong.

Laws which allow authorities unfettered rights to spy on citizens are bad BECAUSE they could be used by governments to persecute.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not happy or comfortable with the idea of the US having enough nukes to more or less destroy the planet.

Don't worry, we don't.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[Truedat]

Yes and no. [Nuclear Missiles] are a weapon. Depending on who wields the weapon, it can be disastrous. Legally, [Nuclear Missiles] can be used defensively or offensively. I'd say the offensive users are worse than the defensive users. Overall the system is broken, but how "bad" it is that some company got a [Nuclear Missile] -- well, that time will tell.

I'm not judging you btw, I just thought this is an interesting analogy that might be worth thinking about. In other words it's moral for the world to stock up on nuclear missiles as long as nobody uses them.

However you seem to be beating round the bush and are trying to say Apple are the bad guys because they used them first vs Samsung?? The court case (and inevitable appeal) may give credence to Samsung acting first with their "copycat" weapon, time will tell.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[DragonWriter]

That's like saying how bad a law is depends on how its used.

No, its not. It would be like that if the claim was that whether software patents are a bad idea depended on how they are used.

But when your talking about whether a particular corporation getting a particular software patent is bad -- given an environment in which software patents are permitted and often (whether or not in theory they should) overlap in coverage -- you really have to consider how the patent can reasonably be expected to be used over the course of its term.

One can agree that a regime which allows the kind of software patents the present US patent regime allows is bad, while at the same time holding that the situation would be worse if the only firms that sought and received software patents were the ones most inclined to ruthlessly use patent litigation, or its threat, to aggressively prevent competition.

So its a bad analogy.

Laws which allow authorities unfettered rights to spy on citizens are good, provided the government doesn't use that power to persecute.

Wrong.

Laws which allow authorities unfettered rights to spy on citizens are bad BECAUSE they could be used by governments to persecute.

Actually, that's wrong, too. Such laws are wrong because they (assuming, also, a regime which prohibits ex post facto laws categorically, which is desirable for other reasons) prevent effective remedy when government officers choose to spy on citizens for the purpose of persecution. They may also be wrong to the extent that they thereby encourage government misuse of surveillance for persecution.

But the law which makes it legal for them to arbitrarily use the means of surveillance at their disposal doesn't actually enable them to do anything they couldn't do if the law prohibited it; what allows them to abuse surveillance mechanisms is having those mechanisms, not the legal privilege of using them without limitations as to cause and application. So, your example is a bad illustration of the bad analogy.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Why could they not just publish the concepts as prior art? Thus rendering them un-patentable.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has never used a patent offensively, and is very vocal about the need for patent reform. At the same time, they've stated that they live in the Real World, and need to patent things in order to protect themselves from evil companies (think Apple and Microsoft) who litigate rather than compete.

SOMEONE was going to patent this. Be glad it was Google.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[thoughtlover]

netboot is different.

How so? Netboot is like a mix of a fat and thin-client, of sorts. A server loads the OS on a local machine from a preconfigured image. I don't see how Google's patent is any different than delivering BIOS updates to routers and media centers.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[oakgrove]

Even if Google has no interest in using patents offensively it would be foolish not to have something for the M.A.D. game when the next round of the patent wars kicks off. Mobile and the cloud are two huge growth areas in computing right now and mobile is consumed in a big way in lawsuits. Whither the cloud?

Re:These type of patents are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia was never even remotely close to being as FOSS friendly as Google is. When I had to enter the serial number off of my N770 everytime I wanted to download the system image I was reminded how much respect Nokia had for FOSS. That was a while ago and it's gotten much worse.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[thoughtsatthemoment]

But it's just as bad when Google gets a software patent as when anyone else does. END - THEM - ALL

I have to disagree. Software Patent is not intrinsically different than any other patent. The definition of patent is "to copyright an invention", and invention is "devised method of organization". By this definition, there is really nothing special about software or hardware. It is the same.

So the focus really should be on invention. Is it original? Is it a just a design but not a method? These are the real issues. If there are reasons to get rid of all patents, that's an entire different issues than dealing with the current rampant patent trolling.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[dell623]

Google has never sued anyone over software patents except in retaliation to defend Google's own products. Ever. So yes it is undoubtedly better for Google to get a patent than anyone else, based on facts. I am not a fanboy, but the facts don't lie. Contrast this with the behaviour of Microsoft or Apple or Oracle or a billion patent trolls.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[Hentes]

True, but software patents only go to corporations with deep pockets and herds of lawyers, so if Google wouldn't have patented it a worse company certainly would.

Re:These type of patents are bad

[reve_etrange]

New software is not new invention. You are just using the same old universal algorithms over and over again.

That's my opinion - but regardless, the real problem is that the patent office must generate its own funding via fees, creating an incentive to approve every patent (so the fat reexamination fee can be collected later).

Re:These type of patents are bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I like what Google does... most of it anyway. But it's just as bad when Google gets a software patent as when anyone else does.

IMHO this patent is hardly valid. Apollo computers, back in the 80's (later purchased by HP) already had that technology and some.

good, bad or the big gray between?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Microsoft and Apple design their OSes to be like this, they obviously have to pay Google now.

Re:good, bad or the big gray between?

[jasper160]

Given Apple's track record they will file a lawsuit Monday.

Re:good, bad or the big gray between?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well they DID used to have their Netboot technology.....

Re:good, bad or the big gray between?

[ceoyoyo]

And perhaps they should. From the description it sounds like there's plenty of prior art, including Apple's netboot.

Re:good, bad or the big gray between?

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually have to read the patent(s) to determine if there's prior art. The six word Slashdot summary of a multiple-page-document does not ever, despite popular belief, provide you with meaningful information.

Re:good, bad or the big gray between?

[gl4ss]

You actually have to read the patent(s) to determine if there's prior art. The six word Slashdot summary of a multiple-page-document does not ever, despite popular belief, provide you with meaningful information.

yeah, from what I gather you also have to mount /home from network.

Maybe good

[Aighearach]

Google pretending to have invented the thin client might protect us from somebody else patenting it. Although I did have to check the date and make sure it wasn't April 1st.

Re:Maybe good

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, did Apple invent Secure DNS, or did SAIC, who ended up selling the patents to VirnetX?

Re:Maybe good

[Anonymous Coward]

You assume Google doesn't do evil, which is not the case.

Re:Maybe good

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. This is such a crazy generic concept invented by core computer scientists! How can this be patented. Silly.

specific claim

[AdamWill]

"1. A system for providing an operating system over a network to a local device, comprising: a base image server configured to transmit a base image of the operating system; a preferences image server configured to transmit at least one preferences image; and an image loader configured to combine the base image and the at least one preferences image into a combined image at the local device in order to provide a full version of the operating system on the local device and automatically remove the full version of the operating system from the local device when logging off or exiting the full version of the operating system on the local device."

If this ever gets used in a court case, I predict a world of fun in defining exactly what a 'preferences image' is.

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does this sound like PXE boot (with a few things tacked on) to me?

Re:specific claim

[postbigbang]

On the shoulders of netboot, PxE boot, and even CLOAD, this should have never have been granted. This, I believe, was designed to piss off Apple and Microsoft, but it should line the pockets of lawyers for decades.

USPTO? Rubber stampers.

Re:specific claim

[pointyhat]

Definitely prior art then. I did this in 1992 when we booted our PLCs (their programs that is) off RS485 drops. When they were turned off the program memory was cleared.

In 1996 we did it with Solaris by mounting /usr/local and /opt off an NFS share with automount. When they were turned off, it dismounted.

In 2008 we did this with thin clients (which pull their OS and configuration from a TFTP server).

In 2011 we did this with Office using App-V (not an OS but the principle is the same).

More proof that patents are a load of shit.

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we can get Obama to claim "you didn't patent that" and make all the patents public domain by presidential decree.

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems this has been around for a while. It's called PXE boot.

Re:specific claim

[postbigbang]

Obama has not a thing to do with this.

Re:specific claim

[Meeni]

Stateless cluster OS, back in the late 90'es, and probably existed in some form for mainframe client terminals. But whatever, its on the INTERNET, so its different now.

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a joke, moron. Stop thinking everytime the man's name is mention that it's an attack on his administration. No wonder people are so up in arms about politics with attitudes like yours.

Re:specific claim

[rgbrenner]

Did any of your examples do the following (all of which it must do to be prior art):

Keep ALL OS and preference changes in sync with the server (so that when the local device is rebooted, OS and preference changes are restored). Note the patent also includes a remotely-mounted disk image for the user's files -- so that is not what it is talking about here.

An image loader than downloads the OS and preference images and combines them to create the full version of the OS

When the changes are synced with the server, the changes are compressed, encrypted, and transmitted incrementally.

Re:specific claim

[geekoid]

Maybe you should read the patent and technical specs of the items you listed? Hint: They aren't the same thing.

you people are idiots.

Re:specific claim

[geekoid]

No. He's just another moron who reads a brief non technical description and then applies thing that seem similar.

Any excuse to whine like a 4 year old about the patent system and these bozo's come out of the closet like clowns out of a small car.

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh huh. Did you forget to append 'Sent from my Google wokstation' to your post?

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Seems pretty clear to me -- you have your OS base image, and your preferences image. The preferences image stores all your user data and preferences, so that way they can update the base OS image without wiping all your data. Plus that prevents them from having to store all the base OS data a few million times.

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we should get Ron Paul to claim "you didn't patent that" and make all the patents public domain by idiot's decree.

It's just a joke dude. Don't get all up in arms about it.

Re:specific claim

[postbigbang]

Read the whole thing. Do you live in a cave? Hint: cut thru the babble, and there is not a thing new. Not.A.Thing.

Re:specific claim

[rgbrenner]

the very moment you said "stateless" you proved your 'prior art' isn't prior art at all.

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

More proof that patents are a load of shit.

Oh yeah? Show us the excerpts of Google's patent that the prior art you mentioned covers. Shouldn't be a problem here since we're all experts on patent law.

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

No one got up in arms about it. Despite your best (*cough*cough*) efforts to do so you've really failed... you obviously don't understand the humor of the post either. Oh well, another retard in a long line of retards.

Re:specific claim

[pointyhat]

I actually read the entire technical description and yes (bar the thin client, which I withdraw) I am correct. I'm just being as vague as the OP.

I also hold a patent of a technical nature (microwave PLL implementation) so I'm hardly biased. In fact I still state it's a load of shit as I've had to spend a lot of money defending the patent in the past resulting in me just saying "do what the fuck you like with it" (yes I let you do that Analog Devices).

Now I understand that your ID is several powers lower than mine, but not need to be an asshat.

Re:specific claim

[Meeni]

The client is stateless, not the environment. But anyway I used the wrong term, its diskless. My bad.
 

Re:specific claim

[rgbrenner]

to be prior art, it must meet ALL of the claims in the patent. None of your examples meet all of the claims, and therefore are not prior art.

If you don't agree, please name the ONE technology that meets all of the patents.

Re:specific claim

[Score Whore]

Sounds like Solaris Jumpstart to me.

Re:specific claim

[Truedat]

Jesus H, only on slashdot. Yes, if by "piss off" you mean "google attempting to add value to their business to protect future revenues". They are not trying to act out some nerds fantasy battle.

Re:specific claim

[Znork]

I did most of that in the ninetees with the CODA filesystem and netbooted clients. I have to agree with pointyhat, there's nothing new in the patent for anyone who's had any interest in implementing anything like it at some point in the last two decades..

Re:specific claim

[rgbrenner]

"most of that"?

Then you don't have prior art. You need ONE that meets all of the claims described in the patent.

You do understand that if you do something very similar to the patent, but do it slightly differently, and therefore do not infringe on ONE of the claims, you won't infringe on the patent.

So saying you did something similar, but not exactly, and therefore this patent is invalid.. is an invalid argument.

If you want to argue that what is different here is not sufficiently different to qualify for a patent.. then point out what is different and why it should not qualify as sufficiently novel.

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

to be prior art, it must meet ALL of the claims in the patent. None of your examples meet all of the claims, and therefore are not prior art.

Not quite. Prior art can apply to any of the individual claims of the patent (particularly the most broad 'independent' claims), should the prior art example fit the content of that claim. This would not invalidate the patent in its entirety, since any subsequent dependent claims will still hold if their addition to the broad claim is novel. But this would prevent the patent owner from applying the broadest claim to some competitor's product and stating that it is infringing.

As an example - Google can state that a product infringes their patent even if it only provides the functionality listed in claim 1 (quoted above), for which a broad interpretation could include a BOOTP/NFS implementation. It would be up to the "infringer" to show that prior art exists for claim 1, invalidating it. This would not affect claim 14 (for example), which adds the further detail of synchronization, unless separate prior art can be provided that further invalidates claims 7 and 13.

Note that Google is probably very unlikely to push for such a broad interpretation of claim 1, or go after an infringer of only that part, because of the probability of prior art existing for it. But it doesn't mean that they couldn't. (Hence the definition of patent trolling.)

Re:specific claim

[rgbrenner]

claim 1 was not quoted in it's entirety above. The full claim 1 is:

1. A system for providing an operating system over a network to a local device, comprising: a base image server configured to transmit a base image of the operating system; a preferences image server configured to transmit at least one preferences image; and an image loader configured to combine the base image and the at least one preferences image into a combined image at the local device in order to provide a full version of the operating system on the local device and automatically remove the full version of the operating system from the local device when logging off or exiting the full version of the operating system on the local device.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the image loader is further configured to determine at least one of an appropriate base image or an appropriate preferences image for the local device.

3. The system of claim 1, further comprising a synchronizer configured to synchronize a base image on the local device with a base image on the base image server in order to provide a synchronized version of the full version of the operating system on the local device.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the local device includes a Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), and the BIOS on the local device loads the image loader at boot time.

5. The system of claim 1, comprising a boot loader configured to boot load the combined image on the local device.

BOOTP/NFS does not meet what is described above.

Re:specific claim

[Qzukk]

NFS over IPSEC would do everything you claimed, with the linux kernel acting as the "combiner" between a / filesystem and a /home filesystem.

Technically though, the claim says that the image itself is transferred to the client, which means it would be mounted on the local system then changes uploaded "incrementally" as diffs to the image as the changes are made, which makes all y'all wrong.

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Claim 1, by itself, is an independent claim, and can be used just as much as any other patent-protected claim. Claims 2 through 5 are dependent claims, and do not affect claim 1 at all - they only provide further protection should claim 1 be invalidated.

See 37 CFR section 1.75(c) (definition of dependent claim; e.g. claims 2-5), and 1.75(g) ('The least restrictive claim should be presented as claim number 1, and all dependent claims should be grouped together with the claim or claims to which they refer to the extent practicable.'). Also see 37 CFR 1.104(c), on invalidating claims (specifically, that invalidation occurs claim-by-claim, not all-or-none).

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

novell netware? duh...

Re:specific claim

[hobarrera]

Yes, this is exactly what I was thinking. I'm pretty sure there's prior art of what this patent describes from over 20 years ago!

Re:specific claim

[MichaelJ]

We did this in the late 1980s with SunOS diskless boot of 3/50 and 3/60 workstations. They didn't get their "preferences" from a separate server, though, which would be enough to not be prior art for the patent.

Re:specific claim

[strikethree]

And which of those individual "inventions" did not exist already? This is clearly in the realm of a possible incremental improvement of existing processes. It is astounding that something making such simplistic claims is patentable.

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

(Apologies for replying to myself.)

I think my answer was a bit unclear - I'll try to be more specific.

The OP *did* quote claim 1 in its entirety - anything comprising claim 1 must be listed specifically in that bullet. So it is a *very* broad claim - hence, Google could theoretically argue infringement on any product which fulfills only the description in claim 1, regardless of the text in any following claims. The following dependent claims 2 through 5 only* serve to redundantly protect more specific implementations should claim 1 be considered invalid (due to prior art or non-novelty).

For example: (I'll drop the BOOTP/NFS part - that's admittedly a poor example)

1) Company X implements and sells a system exactly as described in the points under claim 1 (bullet point 1). Google can file suit against Company X, claiming infringement of claim 1 of their patent. To counter this suit. Company X only needs to show prior art for those elements in claim 1 (they do not need to fulfill any of the others, since Google claims infringement only on claim 1). Should they do so, claim 1 of the patent will be ruled invalid, and company X can continue to sell their product. The rest of Google's patent (claims 2-18) remain valid.

2) Company Y, seeing the success of Company X, implements and sells their own system as described in claim 1, but also includes the features in claim 3 (e.g. adding the synchronizer for the local/remote base images). Google can file suit against Company Y, claiming infringement of claim 3 of their patent (they could also file as infringing claim 1 if it were still valid). In order to be infringing, Company Y's product must fulfill all of claim 3, and because it is dependent on claim 1, the product must also fulfill all of claim 1. If the product does so, then Company Y must show prior art that invalidates claim 3 - that is, some existing product/system that incorporates all of dependent claim 3, and all of independent claim 1. If they can, then claim 3 will also be ruled invalid. If not, then they are infringing.

3) Company Z releases a product which implements the elements of one of the dependent claims (e.g. claim 4 - a device with a BIOS that can load an image loader), without the functionality of claim 1. Google can not argue infringement of claim 4, as Company Z's product does not completely fulfill that claim - this is true even if Company Z has a separate product that also implements those parts of claim 1, so long as the two products can not be put together into a single solution that fulfills all elements from both claims 1 and 4.

* Note - There are other reasons for having dependent claims - the Wikipedia page on patent claims does a good job of explaining independent vs. dependent claims, and why the more specific dependent claims are necessary even though they are redundant to the broadest one.

Re:specific claim

[atomicxblue]

I thought EyeOS already did this in 2005

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a joke, moron.

To be fair, you have to be a Dittohead to get it. The rest of the world heard the sound-bite in context.

Re:specific claim

[VortexCortex]

It does bring into question the Obviousness and Iterative nature, which a patent must not be. The PTO will grant you a weak patent if you like, just cross the T and dot the i... If you want to waste money defending a shitty patent in court, then it's on you -- That's their reasoning, granting a patent doesn't even mean it's valid these days -- remove your head from your ass: Swinging on a Swing Sideways was Patented!

Re:specific claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too!!

Re:specific claim

[Znork]

Did most of it, could probably have done all of it. As far as I can recall I didn't actually encrypt, but if I had needed encryption the obvious solution would have been to, you know, encrypt. All of the claims are just obvious combinations of prior art or minor variations on things that have been done for decades.

Of course, one doesn't expect the employees of the PTO to actually have been out of their basement for a few decades. Or have access to anything but a library from the early seventies.

Re:specific claim

[dbIII]

Even knoppix was doing that before 2009 from a live CD.

Re:specific claim

[multiplexo]

So let me see if I have this straight. I take an X-terminal, or my old Sun SparcStation that in 1993 could boot up, use bootp to get an IP address and then connect to a TFTP server to download an OS image and on top of that I add some minor refinements, such as adding another server that stores any changes I made to the OS so that the next time I boot I get an image that's customized, oh, and when I sync these changes to the server I compress them (which no one has ever done before to save bandwidth and improve performance), encrypt them (which no one has ever done before to ensure security) and only transmit the incremental changes (which no one has ever done before to improve performance) and all of a sudden I have something that's the basis for a whole new patent? Damn, who knew that it was so easy? Seriously, I read the document and this comes off like someone trying to patent putting bacon on a cheeseburger and extending that patent to the entire concept of putting any and all other toppings on a cheeseburger, or any other kind of sandwich for that matter.

Vs. Diskless boot?

[MikeTheGreat]

Didn't Unix (specifically, NFS) have a diskless boot option decades ago? Between that and whatever VMWare's been doing (they must have a way of choosing which image you want to load onto your server, right?) how is this in any way an original, patent-able idea?

Re:Vs. Diskless boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but that didn't have the word "cloud" in it so it doesn't count as prior hype erm art.

Re:Vs. Diskless boot?

[seyfarth]

RFC 906 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc906) from 1984 described booting over a network.

Re:Vs. Diskless boot?

[geekoid]

you don't patent loose ideas, you patent specific ideas.

And this does a bunch of stuff the pope who wrote RFC 906 didn't even think of.

I like how you don't know what vmware does, don't know who this patent work, but then assume they are the same thing.

Re:Vs. Diskless boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

People patent loose ideas all the time. Shill better, moron.

Re:Vs. Diskless boot?

[MikeTheGreat]

It was tough reconciling the sacrosanct rule of not RTFA with a desire to actually know what the patent actually does. So I compromised, followed the link, and then only read the summary:

A system for providing an operating system over a network to a local device is provided. The system includes a base image server, a preferences image server and an image loader. The system may also include a boot loader. A method for providing an operating system over a network to a local device is also provided. The method includes receiving a request for an operating system. The method further includes transmitting to a local device remotely stored base and preferences images that are configured for combination into a combined image. The method may also include the synchronizing the combined image with a cached version of an operating system on the local device.

Going back and reading the patent in a little bit more detail, and then skimming RFC 906, I still don't see how the patent isn't obvious. Things like encrypting the image (or compressing the image), updating the image, etc, etc all seem like they 'fall out of' the diskless booting idea.

Could you provide list of the specific things that this does that RFC 906 doesn't do?

Re:Vs. Diskless boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah cos serving data from a server on the local network is exactly the same from serving data from any of multiple machines from around the globe. There wouldn't be any structural changes or differences in implementation whatsoever. That's why IT has no problems moving all their services to the Cloud, it's just a flip of the switch! Yesiree, no need to distinguish those two at all.

Re:Vs. Diskless boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

There wouldn't be any structural changes or differences in implementation whatsoever

Technically, thanks to the wonders of THE INTERNET, I can put any IP address into my kernel's NFS root line and it'll mount a filesystem from anywhere in the world stupid enough to let me have access to their NFS server!

No structural changes required at all.

Re:Vs. Diskless boot?

[Anonymous Coward]

So... you could flip a switch, right now, and nobody'd be any the wiser, right?

Re:Vs. Diskless boot?

[Qzukk]

Could you provide list of the specific things that this does that RFC 906 doesn't do?

What makes it different (although geekoid and rgbrenner appear to be too busy trolling to actually stop and figure it out, so they are incapable of answering your question) is that the claims declare that the images themselves are served to the client, consumed locally, then changes to the image are uploaded incrementally (which I assume means "as they are made" rather than just a diff on shutdown).

In other words, the closest thing I can think of is what Amazon looks like (from outside the black box) they have been doing with their AMIs since at least early 2009 (which is when someone felt like it should get its own wiki page). It's still not quite right since the persistent storage (user data) portion is still a remote filesystem (S3) rather than an image downloaded to the VM, and configuration (changes to the AMI) have to be repackaged as your own personal AMI manually (changes to your local copy of the AMI image are otherwise lost when the instance is stopped).

Re:Vs. Diskless boot?

[MikeTheGreat]

Huh - so the main difference is that it can figure out what's changed after the local machine has been running for a while, and save those changes?

Many many moons ago I was at a Usenix conference & it seemed like the trendy topic was moving a process from one machine to another. After some quick Googling, it looks like the terms to look for are
process migration
and
application checkpointing

This patent sound similar to that stuff.

(It's probably one of these things where I"m going to have to dig deeply into all these concepts in order to actually be able to clearly differentiate amongst them.)

Re: trolling: LOL, yeah - I replied to geekoid, *then* clicked on his name & noticed that all his posts are very short and very negative. Luckily for me my response also got a reply from you, and so the discussion quality just upticked quite a bit :)

FUCK APPLE AND STEVE JOBS GOD DAMN FAGETS

[Anonymous Coward]

oh wait, this a google patent! carry on then!

Sigh... netboot?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this any different than netboot? Support for that was built into Intel hardware, at least since 8 years ago and probably a lot longer. I bet people have been booting off, and updating over the network a lot longer than the terms of any patent. Not cutting on Google here. They just have to play this game, because it's one big game of corporate mutual assured destruction...

Re:Sigh... netboot?

[DeBaas]

hard to tell, but to me it seems that the big difference is that with netboot, you boot from the network, whereas this boots locally, gets a boot image, puts it to local disk and boots that. So you boot locally, just first get the bootimage over the network and store it.

It looks in my view similar to http://simpc.nl/ Although SimPC (at least way back, when I worked on it) always booted locally and just got a new new image when a it was newer. Considering that they mention it may be 'synchronized version of a locally cached version' it may be argued that it is similar.

I would say, hard to defend this patent. But I am not really an expert in patent laws

Prior art?

[PPH]

... I think as I look over at my BOOTP/NFS diskless client that has been sitting on my desk for over a decade.

Re:Prior art?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Prior Art means specific things/processes defined in the patent provably existed before the patent was filed. It does not mean that the general description of the Product that uses the patent matches the general description of another product that existed before.

Re:Prior art?

[rgbrenner]

Can we stop with this BS? It's very clear from the patent claims that netboot is NOT prior art.

I agree with most of the people here that software patents should be eliminated.. but when you make up prior art, the people on the other side of this debate look at your claim, see that it isn't prior art at all, and then you are out of the debate.. because you've been shown to be inaccurate, or worse, a liar... and they win the argument.

So please just stop.

There are plenty of arguments that can be made for the elimination of software patents.. so it's entirely unnecessary.

Re:Prior art?

[PPH]

but when you make up prior art,

Make up? Thin and diskless clients and the protocols to provision them with an OS and configure them from a remote server have been around for decades. The Google claims might not line up exactly, but I suspect that there's nothing sufficiently novel about them, given the prior art, that they dweserve a patent.

Re:Prior art?

[PPH]

Prior Art means specific things/processes defined in the patent provably existed before the patent was filed.

Or things sufficiently similar to Google's patent claims existed to make the claims non-obvious.

The chariot wheel was sufficient prior art to keep Ford from having a patent granted for the wheel on its Model T.

Re:Prior art?

[rgbrenner]

thin and diskless clients are not what is described in the patent.

If you think they are close enough, then point out the differences, and then say that what Google has done is not sufficiently novel to qualify for a 20 year patent.

Many would agree with you.. including myself.

But the patent definitely does not describe a thin client, and simply holding them up and saying they are the same as the patent won't win you any arguments

Re:Prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

The chariot wheel was sufficient prior art to keep Ford from having a patent granted for the wheel on its Model T.

Certain aspects of the chariot wheel were sufficient prior art to invalidate specific claims of the patent on Ford's wheel.

FTFY.

This isn't nitpickery, it's important to understand this distinction.

Re:Prior Art?

[Rob_Bryerton]

>>Or VMware's Boot from SAN.

I think you mean "Or boot from SAN", no? Not sure what VMware (or their overrated toy software) has to do with that, other than that ESXi, too, can boot from SAN like any semi-modern or modern OS.

Re:Prior art?

[Aighearach]

The patent describes a netboot configuration where the home directory is also networked mounted and the client uses a RAM disk.

It is true that the patent doesn't line up with exactly one earlier product but it certainly lines up exactly with the easily combined existing products. And if you have those goals, it is obvious how to do it, none of the tools is being used for something other than the intended purpose.

Re:Prior art?

[PPH]

I understand it. The problem is; you can't just throw a few claims together and then block people from implementing any subset of the others. And upon scanning the claims, I see nothing that I haven't seen before.

In fact, about 20 years ago, I worked on a system that did something very similar. Except for claim #10, updating the system on the fly while in use. But that wasn't because we didn't know how. Our system* had to maintain a given configuration while run to meet FAA traceability requirements. My job, when I arrived on the project, was to port the system from a modem-based communications system to this newfangled TCP/IP thing people were raving about. That's how old this technology is.

*And our 'mobile device' was a coupe of tons of automated test equipment mounted on a wheeled cart.

Re:Prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Knowing how to do it != prior art.

Doing it == prior art.

Re:Prior art?

[PPH]

Knowing how to do it == obvious to the skilled practitioner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventive_step_and_non-obviousness

Re:Prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that depends on why you knew how to do it (ie you've done it as a test, as opposed to just theorizing out loud in a meeting) and *if* you really knew how to do it instead of just assuming you did.

If you really are as experienced as you're implying, you cannot really tell me with a straight face that it's always as easy as it seems when a project involving research is started.

Re:Prior art?

[multiplexo]

Dude. You should sell it to someone for a lot of money and tell them that it's a new prototype for a "Cloudstation". Cash in on the hype!

I've been doing this for years on Windows...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell grants these patents?

http://superuser.com/questions/42263/how-to-install-windows-7-from-the-network

Re:I've been doing this for years on Windows...

[flimflammer]

Someone who probably read a little more of the patent than yourself.

That is not even close to prior art in this case.

Confused

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary is a bit unclear. Did they just win a patent on dumb terminals, over-the-wire upgrades, or remote boot? All three?

The best sign yet!

[CODiNE]

It is the best sign yet that Google is working toward a bright future as a patent troll."

FTFY

Here's how it's different

[rgbrenner]

Did you read the patent? I'm guessing not, since you're asking how it's different than netboot.

Google's patent basically says:

The BIOS loads an image loader
The image loader downloads the OS image + a preferences image from a server
The image loader combines these two images to create the full version of the OS and loads the image on to the local device
When changes are made to the image on the local device (file change, settings, etc), these changes are kept in sync with the OS/preferences image server(s)
When the device is shutdown the image is removed from the device

The patent has more details.. but that's the basic idea (at least from my interpretation.. correct me if I'm wrong)

Re:Here's how it's different

[gl4ss]

ok how is it different from a netboot that loads user prefs from the network after/while booting(hard to argue at which point it has booted) and saves said prefs(settings files) back to network?

it was filed in 2009, pretty hard to come up with new concepts on the issue at that point. but pretty easy to word older obvious ideas so that they get through the patent office..

Re:Here's how it's different

[BradleyUffner]

ok how is it different from a netboot that loads user prefs from the network after/while booting(hard to argue at which point it has booted) and saves said prefs(settings files) back to network?

NetBoot downloads once, at boot time, and is a one way process. This Keeps things in sync constantly while running, actively patching state (more than just preferences) in and out.

Re:Here's how it's different

[Uncle Warthog]

Sounds like a network boot of Windows 95/98 + roaming profiles to me.

Re:Here's how it's different

[rgbrenner]

it's not.. maybe you should read the patent?

Re:Here's how it's different

[IAmR007]

That sounds exactly like UnionFS or union mounts: http://lwn.net/Articles/312641/, http://lwn.net/Articles/217084/. UnionFS is used in some LiveCDs to allow saving to a ramdisk (which you could dump to a file if you want).

Re:Here's how it's different

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like something that's obvious to somebody versed in the art.

Re:Here's how it's different

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, so what? How's that any different then any other piece of software that loads through a network and saves user's preferences?

Re:Here's how it's different

[gl4ss]

ok how is it different from a netboot that loads user prefs from the network after/while booting(hard to argue at which point it has booted) and saves said prefs(settings files) back to network?

NetBoot downloads once, at boot time, and is a one way process. This Keeps things in sync constantly while running, actively patching state (more than just preferences) in and out.

sure, but "user prefs from the network after/while booting(hard to argue at which point it has booted) and saves said prefs(settings files) back to network" is not a one way process. and it's been done, perhaps not elegantly, but done anyways. if the /home or windows equivalent of that is just mounted from the network then that's what it is..

PXE called

[kimvette]

They want their prior art back, and also referred us to BootP+TFTP(or)NFS and similar diskless workstation schemes which predate PXE by decades.

Re:PXE called

[rgbrenner]

1) the patent says when the data is synced, it is compressed and encrypted
2) BootP does not keep OS changes in sync (if the OS image is changed, those changes are not saved w/ BootP... the patent has an OS image server that keeps those changes in sync)

Re:PXE called

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor shill is poor.

Re:PXE called

[Celarent Darii]

LTSP images are also encrypted and compressed. Changes can be put in sync over NFS or whatever. LTSP is done over DHCP via TFTP.

This stuff is ancient. Really can't see how they can patent what was old even in the 1980's.

One could even argue theat emacs-client does this via Emacs server, but some wouldn't call Emacs an operating system.

Re:PXE called

[rgbrenner]

LTSP is not the same thing at all. Here's a wikipedia page to LTSP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Terminal_Server_Project
and the patent is in the summary. Go compare them.

Re:PXE called

[rgbrenner]

Damnit. You've foiled my plan. I registered for this account in 1999/2000, and I've waited 12 years to build my reputation on slashdot just for this very moment when I could shill for Google. Now it's all been ruined!

F'ing moron

Re:PXE called

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay. So what features are both novel and non-obvious in this patent?

Re:PXE called

[Aighearach]

Whippersnappers these days don't realize we not only had netboot back then, we had RAM disks, transparently compressed networking, various combinations of mount points, and all of sometimes with profiles selected based on DNS or other nonsense.

They seem to think we didn't have electricity.

Oops, I'm almost out of power I better get on the bicycle and charge the batteries.

Re:PXE called

[Celarent Darii]

LTSP provides an operating system over a network, in this case Linux - as in the patent.
LTSP provides this operating system disk image in an encrypted and compressed form, as in the patent.
LTSP even provides login credentials for clients, which is even better than this patent.
LTSP can also provide a mounting point for various preferences (most preferences are in fact in the /home/* directories), as in the patent. These preferences are automatically synced (on save) as in the patent.
LTSP also has options of providing a different operating system according to the architecture of the devices requesting an image (for instance i386 or amd), as in the patent.
LTSP can furthermore provide specific preferences to the hardware by a simple configuration file, as in the patent.

LTSP does everything this patent grants, and more. The point is that the patent doesn't show anything NEW or even INVENTIVE at all.

LTSP is actually just a bunch of bash scripts. There are even more ancient technologies that do the same, just thought that perhaps more people might be familiar with LTSP to give an example.

Bindun

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, like putting a SunOS root partition on an NFS share then mounting it on a client after a network boot using Jumpstart? I say SunOS because I was doing it in 1996 and I am pretty sure it was being used long before that.

I've got it covered man

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to worry. I patented getting a patent on a Cloud OS. That means I can threaten to sue Google.

All you have to do, friend, is help me gather enough money to pay a retainer on a lawyer, and it'll work fine.

Just send it to Nigerian Prince, c/o Exxon Mobile, 90120.

You forgot one thing old timer ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely prior art then. I did this in 1992 when we booted our PLCs (their programs that is) off RS485 drops. When they were turned off the program memory was cleared.

In 1996 we did it with Solaris by mounting /usr/local and /opt off an NFS share with automount. When they were turned off, it dismounted.

In 2008 we did this with thin clients (which pull their OS and configuration from a TFTP server).

In 2011 we did this with Office using App-V (not an OS but the principle is the same).

More proof that patents are a load of shit.

You forgot "Now, get off my lawn!"

Quicky, someone patent

[Anonymous Coward]

OS on the local device...

All you M$ haters...

[Anonymous Coward]

have nothing on Google. They surpasses M$ as a terrible company years ago. M$ is a saint compared to Google..

What's different

[Anonymous Coward]

They changed the names. That's obviously patentable.

I got rid of my diskless setup almost 20 years ago. But it downloaded an image via tftp, booted and then configured itself via NIS. Later I had two systems w/ local disk which were both configured as NIS masters and would push updates to each other so they would stay in sync and I could boot or reboot in any order. I never did make the diskless client an NIS master, but it was certainly obvious how to do so if one wished or to boot over the network and install and customize the image. Big sites wrote this sort of thing all the time. And Sun and many others have offered a variety of flavors of doing it.

This is very reminiscent of the Mark Williams Company patent on communicating between big and little endian systems by using a standard byte order on the network.

Work around it

[epa]

It is always easier to avoid a patent than invalidate it.

Netboot is not an anticipation of the claim because it does not have the "preferences image server".

It is dead easy to avoid, though. Just don't "remove the full version of the operating system from the local device when logging off". Note the word "remove"? Do something like invladiate an encryption key that is needed to make the full version work. That is part of the OS's data, not part of the OS itself. Even just by overwiting a small but crucial part of the "full OS", such as a jump table, will get you the result you want, but not infringe the patent.

The thing about patent is to COMPLETELY ignore the abstract, read and interpret the main claims, and if you really do not know what the claims mean, condescend to read the description.

Above all, remember: It's the independent claims that matter -- almost nothing else does!

Re:Work around it

[epa]

I meant to say -- I am a patent attorney!

Re:Work around it

[Aighearach]

Netboot is not an anticipation of the claim because it does not have the "preferences image server".

We used to do this using netboot with NFS mounted home directories. Actually we had both per-server and per-user preferences on /etc and /home/user and yes they were stored on their own data server.

Just don't "remove the full version of the operating system from the local device when logging off".

We used to do that by running it on a RAM disk. As long as you're shutting down and not just removing power, the disk gets unmounted and the OS is removed.

Puppy Linux

[technosaurus]

Or... just use pxe+tftp with a modified Puppy Linux. Just add a couple lines of code to init for using /proc/cmdline to select which squashfs to load (choice of flavor=.sfs) and the user save file (savefile=.*fs ... which can be any file system including network or encrypted ones) onto the union file system.

... but why bother - I can already get a modified puppy with Xvesa+jwm+rxvt+sh in a 1Mb kernel image and boot in ~1s, so I am pretty sure that with coreboot in a 2Mb BIOS we could skip the pxe/tftp parts altogether. Google can't even fit half of Dalvik in twice that.

If only Turing had patented his machine

[presidenteloco]

That patent would have expired by now, and allowed everyone to code whatever algorithm they want on a general purpose computer.

I took compsci. I learned about ifs, loops, subroutines, how to string them together (and a few other odds and ends), and I consider myself free to string them together however I damn well please.

Phew

[Anonymous Coward]

For a moment I thought they patented something useful, like an OS that can dynamically grow and shrink as you add and remove various processor nodes to and from the network.

Prior Art?

[dave562]

"Providing an OS to a device over a local network" sounds a lot like PXE boot to me. Or VMware's Boot from SAN.

prior art

[crutchy]

if google applied for the patent back in 2009 it can't be for a network operating system because i remember using netware in high school in the 90s and surely the us patent office can't be that ignorant to not know of netware

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetWare
"NetWare is a computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc"
"Initial release 1983"

Exactly!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is just re-inventing the dumb terminals of the 80s and claiming it is new.

PATENT: The six letter word...

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

...that should be a four letter word.

ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

So they invented Plan 9/Inferno?

Apple's NetBoot?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBoot

I'm sure there are other examples of this that go back pretty far. Is there something about this patent that is unique and original?