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Intel Owns Patent on Distributed Computing
GnrcMan writes "Now here is something frightening: This patent describes a method of using an ISP subscriber's CPU cycles to process the ISP's data." As if Distributed.net, SETI@home, and other, similar projects hadn't been doing essentially the same thing all along, eh?
First of, the basis is exactly as for SETI@home but for the one single line (1a): All of the 'for the good of the world' process distribution systems (like SETI@home) are initiated localy, at the discretion of the user. If I want to run my client overnight that's my decision, not the decision of SETI@home. But here Intel patents a method where the user has nothing to say about if s/he wants to give processor power away.
Moving on (16): Now this, at least to my untrained eyes, seems to say that any time the central computer wants it the remote must perform the task. Once again there is no question of 'wanting', it's simply stated that the central comp can order the remote to perform certain tasks. Of course there is the part about 'at a predetermined time'. But that doesn't say anything about what that time is. An ISP using this system might require it's customers computers to be available at any given 'predetermined time', even if this would be in the mid-afternoon when they're in use.
The idea is expanded in 21a: The first set of tasks, stored localy on the remote, might be nothing other than a program that listens for a request from the central server. Thus the servers might, on a predetermined schedule say once every minute, querry the remote. If the remote would then be available it would recieve new data (ie second set) that would contain the 'real' data to be computed. Brilliant, AOL can now enter our comps and request us to compute for them at any time.
Correlation 1(25): And 2 (27):
Ok, so now it's a quetsion of intention. In the patent Intel states its benign intentions, to lessen the server load of an ISP and/or sitehost. But, as with any patent, this could be seen more generaly as the ability to 'slave' a users computer on the whim of an outside agency. Thus it is up to the reader to decide whether they belive in the goodwill of the Intel Corp. or not.
On a side note, wasn't this form of distribution common already in the 70s with linked Microcomputers being assigned tasks from a central computer?
Phase 1: Where do you want to go today? Phase 2: This is where you want to go today. Phase 3: You're not going any
While it's true that this patent relates to distributed computing, that's not what this is about. What they've really got here is a patent on a method of stealing subscribers CPU cycles. Better check out the ToS when you sign up with an ISP cause, guess what? If this idea comes to be, you might just be required to do some of the processing for your ISP. Another quote to illustrate exactly what they're looking to process:
If a ISP did that you could launch some very nasty attacks against their network by sending them back bad data. Depending on exactly what the parallel processing does you could cripple an ISP. You would have to check the acuracy of all of the data sent back from your customers. That would take up lots of cpu time. Probably more time then you would gain. It just isn't practical unless you can trust your customers. I don't think many ISP's do.
Secondly this isn't compatible with Linux. :)
Just my opinion, of course...
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The date given for the filing is April 18, 1997. This is long after the beginning of GIMPS in January, 1996. Long before Intel even filed for a patent on this exact sort of computing. Perhaps George Woltman, spokesman of the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, has a case against Intel for theft of intellectual property.
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
As has been said, this is done all the time all over the world. SETI@home does it, GIMPS does it and I do it locally in one of my research projects.
Of course this is a frightening situation because I start having this phantasy of getting letters from lawers saying I have to pay a license fee for using "their" software technology.
Can anyone familiar with patent law comment on what their chances are to get through with this?
This technology is documented, has been done, so acutally the patent should have been not accepted.
Cheers,
Chris
A system executes computer processing tasks on a remote computer that communicates with a central computer. The remote computer receives a start message from the central computer. Based on the start message, the remote computer processes raw data to generate processed data, and stores the processed data. Finally, the remote computer sends a complete message to the central computer.
A system executes computer processing tasks on a remote computer that communicates with a central computer. The remote computer receives a start message from the central computer. Based on the start message, the remote computer processes raw data to generate processed data, and stores the processed data. Finally, the remote computer sends a complete message to the central computer.
Ummmm... I think Microsoft might just initiate some action on this matter. That's DCOM. and probably CORBA as well, although I know nothing about it, an let's face it, whoever 'owns' CORBA isn't gonna get a nasty as M$ about it.
How is it not COM? A COM object in a 3-tier app exposes an interface, takes a request from the remote computer and returns data. Any M$ developer who attends there tech briefings knows Microsoft is COM-crazy these days. It's being billed as a cornerstone of every new development problem you need to solve. (OT: They are even taking about making the interface between objects XML.)
Anyway, I just think M$ is gonna take one look at that and say BULLSH*T!
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Although the intent of the patent is for distributed computing across a large network, it seems to me that it would also cover clustered computer systems like beowulf.
/. postings for tips on prior stuff.
Maybe some day when people try to enforce these patents, defendants will look to old
The claims of the patent aren't limited to applying distributed computing techniques between an ISP and their customer, and it's the claims that ultimately matter.
Yes, but the claims do not apply to all of distributed computing. They specifically describe processing initiated by the server. AFAIK, most of the distributed computing projects out there are initiated by the client. It's an important distinction.
Besides, yet another moronic patent is old news. To me, the idea of an ISP requiring subscribers to process data is more intriquing. Just how much mileage can you get out of, "Wow, that's a dumb obvious patent that has been done before". I think that whole angle is running out of steam. We all know that the patent system is broken right now and if I spent an hour looking through the database, I'd be able to find hundreds of examples to prove it.
--GnrcMan--
As far as patents are concerned, "essentially the same thing" is not the same thing. SETI@home and Distributed.Net are not doing the same thing as this patent covers. I'm begining to think that Slashdot needs a clue about patents (though with all the discussion you think someone might have got one by now).
This is a common misconception. The patent office does not have the duty to search for prior art. The patent applicant has the duty to notify the patent office of any and all material prior art. The patent office may find some on its own, but the job is not theirs, at least not under US patent law.
The reason behind this is twofold:
- The patent process is not adversarial. If the application meets the requirements, the patent office is obliged to grant the patent, and nobody but the applicant has the right to participate in the process.
- The patent office is not expert in the field of the invention. By definition, the inventor/applicant knows more about the subject area than the patent office. The inventor is much more likely to know of applicable prior art than the patent office.
Failure to tell the patent office of all relevant prior art is one legal ground for overturning a patent in court. If there really is prior art, then Intel's patent is invalid and unenforceable...however, the mere existence of distributed.net and SETI@home may not be enough: they must embody elements of every claim in IBM's patent to completely invalidate it, which may or may not be the case. Check with your friendly neighborhood patent attorney for details (and no, I'm not one).--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
What Intel is describing (in effect, the ability to push processing tasks to remote machines) is something clearly anticipated by Microsoft's COM technology. (In 1997 the marketing name du jour was OLE 2.0, but since "OLE" had come to be a synonym for "speed brake" they changed the name.)
This technique is really quite appealing to large corporations, particularly corporations with operations around the world. I have a client with 16,000 PCs in 34 countries (soon to be 25,000 PCs in 52 countries when a pending acquisition is completed). As I write this they have thousands of PCs sitting on the other side of the world, in the dark, doing nothing. Imagine being able to harness all that CPU time....
There are lots of CPU-intensive tasks that are particularly suited to processing on a plain old desktop PC (as opposed to a top-of-the-line smoking quad Xeon processor box). OCR, image manipulation, and image compression are three activities that spring to mind. If you have unused PCs sitting around, and the network bandwidth to get the data to those PCs, this kind of distributed computing can provide a tremendous benefit to a corporation for essentially zero additional capital.
Microsoft already makes this possible: create a DCOM agent on the remote PC. Ship an install set, and have the agent run the remote install. Ship the data, get the data back (repeat for the next eight hours). You can leave the installed app on that remote machine, or you could even get clever and remove it for security's sake. (This, incidentally, is precisely the technology in Internet Explorer that Microsoft is insisting must be considered a core part of Windows.)
Microsoft isn't going to let Intel prevent anybody from using DCOM--just isn't going to happen. But on the other hand, Microsoft may not fight very hard--Microsoft and Intel (and most of the major technology companies) have cross-licensing agreements that permit using patents of one another. (Sort of a free trade agreement among tech firms, if you will.) If this threatens the functionality of COM (which is the core of Microsoft's Distributed Network Architecture) then we'll see some fur fly. But I don't see that happening.
This patent is describing remote job entry. Prior art for this extends all the way back to the 1960s.
It doesn't matter about the abstract and description sais - the claims are important - here there are 4 (plus dependants):
- 1. basic remote server
- 10. a prefered implmentation of it
- 16. the remote computer's operation
- 21. a 'method patent' for the idea (trying to make it apply to a wider range of stuff)
All of these basicly describe the same idea - used since there were first more than one piece of hardware hooked together - the reason they rewrite it 4 different is to give them more ways to defend it in court.Note the 'predetermined times' clause, I think this seems to be what they think is different from prior art, though they seem to miss most of what's been done. Sadly the patent system only encourages the citing of prior patents - if someone did something and didn't patent it it's not likely to end up in the cites and the examiner will miss it
Here's prior art I can think of
- I did a screen saver that ran verilog simulations on people desktops late at night in 1989 (my personal example)
- any RJE batch system from the 60s that served more than 1 CPU - often some queues only opened at night
- print servers serving multiple printers
- Pixar's use of render farms - discussed in depth in the popular media long before this patent was implemented
I'm sure people can think of other examples - please follow up this post with any you can think of - that way anyone finding themselves in court with these bozos (ok these bozos have lawyers up the wazoo so be carefull) will have a resource to use in their defenceThat's all well and good until they try to pull a Unisys and claim royalties on a firmly entrenched standard.
Allow me to introduce a concept that most slashdotters appear to have no concept of: fiduciary duty. The officers and directors have a legally binding and enforceable duty to their shareholders - and NOBODY ELSE - to use the assets of the corporation to maximize the value of the corporation itself. If the corporation has an asset and fails to take best advantage of it, then the shareholders can sue and the officers and directors can be held personally responsible for the lost value.
This principle means that a corporation that has a patentable invention has a duty to its shareholders to patent it, and a corporation that holds a patent has a duty to exploit it to the best advantage of the shareholders.
I don't like the way Unisys is handling the LZW patent either, but they're hardly evil for doing so. It's quite likely that they are only doing what the law requires of them.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
If two individuals or companies apply for patents on the same invention within a short time period neither of them deserves the patent.
If two or more companies apply for a patent of the same invention within a short time isn't it a proof that it was obvious enough that many different people could invent it, therefore making it non patentable.
I think this would be the logic reasoning and would have the same result with a small nuance, in the first case both believe they should have a patent on it, and they are angry not to have one. In the second case it prove that the thing is obvious, then denying any right to patent it AND following the rules of patents.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
"changes in the patent system in the US cannot be made retroactive in any way that would result in doing away with existing patents. That would be a government taking of private property"
I this isn't possible then when the copyright period was extended from 50 years from the author's death to 70 years to the author's death the then existing copyright shouldn't have retroactively been affected by it, meaning that Mickey and co would be public domain by 20003 or something like that.
I we go one step further, the government took YOUR property (that is, the twenty more years given to the then existing copyrighted material) and should refund you for the amount they stole you, that is for each dollar somebody gave to Disney that was related to Mickey.
Your government owe a VERY big debt to it's citizen, I think you should sue him, you could make a LOT of money (and make the State go bankrupt BTW)
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I was at a dinner with a patent examiner a few weeks ago (he was not a software guy but was pretty knowledgeable ..).. so I dumped on him .. His point was that the patent office has to follow the law, and a court ruled that software patents were fare game (also business models etc). Turns out the P.O. doesn't like the result either but they do _not_ make the law and so are powerless.
What they are thinking about doint is adopting the (European?) system of posting patent applications on the web to get peer review (i.e. us) for prior art etc.
Bottom line -- the P.O. is overwhelmed with applications not of their own choosing and knows they are up the creek. They could do with help, not flames -- right your congressperson.
Tnx
Alanl
First, let me add my voice to those who say that Slashdot's patent stories could use a clue or two. These sensationalistic headlines don't help anybody. I'll be adding a patent section to Advogato soon, and it's my hope that this will become a good place for informed discussion of patents relating to free software.
:). The language of the claims has to be read in the context of the disclosure of the patent, and to really do it right, you have to read the file history too.
When you analyze a patent, the most important thing to look at is the claims. The abstract has little or no legal force, it's just there to help people searching (it's on the front page of paper patents, which was important back in the days when people searched through stacks of them
That said, this is another example of the US Patent and Trademark Office screwing up royally. Claim 1 covers a pretty generic computation load-sharing system - a central computer keeping track of a bunch of tasks, sending a start message to a remote computer to ask it to take the task, and the remote computer sending a complete message back to the server.
The problem here is that there is prior art up the wazoo. I'm sure experts in the field could come up with more, but just about any operating system with process migration, such as Sprite should do. The main work on this project was all done in the early '90s, plenty of time to serve as prior art.
The disclosure doesn't help the case. It talks about the types of tasks to be distributed in extraordinarily vague terms, so much so as to not make much sense. Compressing MPEG's remotely? Are they on crack? Even a 320x200 at 30fps is over 5 megabytes per second of raw data. And of course serving up web pages is fraught with problems, such as latency, security, admin costs, reliability, and so on. The patent does not so much as mention these problems, let alone propose a reasonable method of dealing with them.
So what do you do when you have such a crappy patent? I think a reasonable thing for free software authors to do is ignore it. In theory, Intel could bring suit against a free software project for violating this patent. However, in that case it seems likely to me that we'd be able to get a good pro bono legal team together, and the patent would almost certainly be overturned.
In the meantime, I think our best option is to keep well informed about patents in general, and about specific patents that may be relevant. Shallow, "golly gee-whiz, look at the patent they just got on breathing" stories don't help much.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
I agree completely. I'm actually kind of irritated at Roblimo. My original submission was titled, "A scary patent on stealing CPU cycles".
Apparently he decided to play patent interpeter and make the (incorrect) assumption that this patented all of distributed computing. My comment explains what I believe to be the real discussion point. And I say discussion point because, hey, Intel hasn't made any indication that they will ever even do anything with this patent. There are lots of patents on things that never even get implemented.
--GnrcMan--
The ruling the PTO originally used to justify patents was one (I can look the case up if you want) where using a computer as part of a process was deemed not enough to make the process unpatentable. A computer was assisting a manufacturing process. That is a far cry from the patents that are allowed on software today.
As for peer review. too late. the cat is out of the bag. There are thousands of bogus software patents. The only way the PTO could again gain respect in my eyes would be to invalidate all software patents and start the approval process over again.
Plus I don't pity the patent examiners... just doing their job. oh please. A big part of their budget is based on how many patents they approve. So they have an incorrect bias in approving patents. It is a blantent case of conflict of interest. Much like how a judge can't preside on a case where he has an interest in the outcome (like he would make a mil on his stock in the defense won for example)
Dialups just aren't fast enough for this to be rolled out anytime soon, and people don't appreciate having their phonelines tied up, either.
But, when cable modems and all the rest really catch on, look out!
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
PVM is a good cantidate for prior art. To quote the relevant section of the header comment:
* Revision 1.1 1996/09/23 23:44:26 pvmsrc* Initial revision
*
*
*/
Distributed computing in general is much older still. I was using it on '386es over Lantastic in the mid-80's. As far as I knew then, it was uncommon, but not exactly unheard of. Intel is nowhere near being the inventor of any of this.
The patent office was created to encourage inventors to publish in exchange for a brief (for the time) monopoly on the idea. That was fair compensation since they could just as easily keep it a trade secret and have it last nearly as long. It's primary purpose was to encourage progress by giving inventors a way to safely find an investor and keep inventions from being lost.
Today, patents like this one and the MANY other examples show that the USPTO is having EXACTLY the opposite effect on society. Small inventors can loose their patents by having large corperations steal it, and then throw money and lawyers at them until they go bankrupt (and loose by default) or sign a deal, and inventions that are already common knowledge are being bottled up under similar threats until they are well past their useful life.
Its absolutely shameful, and it has to end.
I'm through ranting now.
I dunno, it seems like their implementation is pretty obvious to anybody who's read the article. Any patent experts care to educate on how this works?
Interestingly, I read the hotwired article when it came out, and now, nearly 3 years later, I've been thinking of doing some x-mas break hacking to throw together a generic implementation of this very thing! It would have been GPL'ed. Anyone know how different the implementation would have to be to avoid hassles?
This is a perfect example of the "chilling effect" of software patents. As a grad student, I definitely don't have the resources to defend myself against a legal attack from Intel!
J.
1. PBS (portable batch system): pbs.mrj.com
(It's just a job queueing program, no need to slashdot these guys, but it does everything I saw in that patent minus the not-quite-so-willing participant bit.)
2. NQS/DQS/... (similar programs).
3. GNU Queue
So, let's see (it takes a while before we
even need the queue programs):
(a) receiving a start message at the remote computer from the central computer at a time that the central computer has predetermined the remote computer will be available for processing one of said first set of processing tasks;
crond plus rsh
(b) processing raw data related to said first set of processing tasks to generate processed data;
(c) storing the processed data; and
(d) sending a complete message to the central computer.
covered by rsh.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the remote computer communicates with the central computer over a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol based network.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein the remote computer communicates with the central computer over a local area network.
Still rsh territory.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein the start message comprises a task and a storage location of the raw data, further comprising the step of retrieving the raw data.
An rsh command with an argument referring
to a file served over NFS/AFS?
5. The method of claim 1, wherein the start message comprises a task and the raw data, and the raw data is processed in accordance with the task.
An rsh command where the data are in ARGV?
(data isn't dammit, data are)
6. The method of claim 1, wherein the complete message comprises a storage location of the processed data.
So the program spits an output filename to STDOUT.
7. The method of claim 1, wherein the complete message comprises the processed data.
So the program spits its output to STDOUT,
which is linked over rsh to the server.
8. The method of claim 1, wherein a plurality of server computers communicate with the remote computer and the central computer, further comprising the step of retrieving the raw data from one of the plurality of server computers.
Oooh, now we need rsh and rcp (or NFS. Where I work we use a queue that calls ssh together with NFS all the time, using several servers).
9. The method of claim 1, wherein a plurality of server computers communicate with the remote computer and the central computer, step (c) comprising the step of: (c-1) storing the processed data on one of the plurality of server computers.
And we write to those NFS servers.
10. [snipped for brevity]
Putting it all together is easy with PBS.
So finally we come to need it.
1) Read SlashDot regularly
= -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
2) Find a good idea (hint: watch the little numbers...good ideas have 4's and 5's!)
3) Run, don't walk, down to the patent office and file for a patent on that idea (be sure to use key patent terms like "process", "method" and "system" to make it as broad as possible).
4) Wait six to ten months for the patent office to stare cluelessly at the patent and eventually give up on "seeking prior art" (patent employees do not read SlashDot...lucky for you!)
5) Take fresh patent and go beat several companies over the head with it. As long as the amount you demand is less than the cost of defense, you'll get paid.
6) Repeat as necessary.
- JoeShmoe
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Since my submission got cut to a one line quote (sniff, it's okay) I thought I'd give some more details:
I'll start with a quote from the patent itself:
Service providers, such as American Online.TM. ("AOL") and Compuserve increasingly must buy more powerful computers to service the additional members and the new content that is
constantly being updated. These service providers could save on computer costs if some of the computational requirements of their system could be serviced by remote personal computers
owned by private individuals and other independent entities who subscribe to the Internet provider services.
While it's true that this patent relates to distributed computing, that's not what this is about. What they've really got here is a patent on a method of stealing subscribers CPU cycles. Better check out the ToS when you sign up with an ISP cause, guess what? If this idea comes to be, you might just be required to do some of the processing for your ISP. Another quote to illustrate exactly what they're looking to process:
Computers, including
servers, must perform many tasks including the providing and generating of WEB pages, compressing Moving Pictures Expert Group ("MPEG") and Joint Photographic Expert Group
("JPEG") images, and serving up WEB pages.
Everyone who wants to serve AOL's web pages for them, raise your hand. Everyone who feels comfortable letting AOL initiate processes, raise your hand.
--GnrcMan--
--
In this situation the governemt arbitrarily picks one of the inventors as the sole beneficiary of the invention. Regardless of how the winner is chosen, it is inherently unfair. One of the goals of the patent system is to encourage inventors to publish their techniques so that the benefits of the invention can be shared by the whole world after a time. But in this case there is no need since it would have already been demonstrated that the invention can be independently reproduced.
*********
Using networked remote computers to execute computer processing tasks,such tasks either done without charge, or at negotiated fee, at times signaled byeither the remote computer or the central computer.
Abstract
A system executes computer processing tasks on a remote computer that communicates with a central computer. The remote computer sends a message of availability to the central computer, or the central computer may send out a signal requesting processing time. Following the initial contact message, the central computer may negotiate a fee with the remote computer for processing time. If negotiation is successful, the central computer sends a task and possibly the associated raw data to the remote computer. The remote computer generates processed data, and stores the processed data. Finally, the remote computer sends a complete message to the central computer, and the processed data is returned to the central computer if that is required.
**********
This differs from both the Intel patent and the current implementation of distributed.net and Seti@Home. The premise here is that the processor time of my system will have value to some other organization, let's say my ISP, but that value is variable based upon both the loading on my system, my preferences and the load on the ISP. Should my system be busy serving content directly when the ISP needs my processor's services, a higher micro-payment will be negotiated. When, on the other hand, my computer signals availability, and the ISP's load is relatively low, a lower micro-payment would be appropriate.
Clearly, this is not just a LAN implementation, although it could be. It would imply persistent connections (such as this DSL line), and could possibly be a method of funding part of the expense of a persistent connection. It does allow me to offer my computer's services for free to some effort like Seti@Home, while selling my processor time to an ISP or other content provider, as appropriate.
Fed up with bad patents, I think we should set up a open site to collect prior art against crazy patents and publicly post it all.
This can be done still avoiding legal problems; I've been thinking about this and working on it for some time. If anyone is interested in helping, on the legal or technical end, contact me at the address above.
They (as IBM and other technology giants) have literaly hundred of thousand of patents for which they don't claim third parties fees.
That's all well and good until they try to pull a Unisys and claim royalties on a firmly entrenched standard. That is why frivolous patents are worrisome.
--GnrcMan--
There are a few bits in there that mean afaik it won't affect the work of Seti@home, distributed.net etc.
:/
The remote computer receives a start message from the central computer.
But with Seti@home and the others, it's the remote computer that sends 'a start message' to the central computer, asking for data to be processed.
receiving a start message (...) at a time that the central computer has predetermined the remote computer will be available
Seti etc. don't run at predetermined times 'that the central computer has predetermined', but whenever the computer has some spare cycles.
I don't see this affecting any current efforts like those mentioned, but IANAL, so who knows how it could be twisted to mean if the lawyers/Intel so wanted
1) Make processors fast
2) Make processors faster
These two things are very important to the business model Intel currently enjoys. Deciding *when* #2 takes place is very important the bottom line.
Imagine, if you will, Microsoft adding code into the operating system that uses the distributed approach described in the patent. This, effectively puts the control over how fast a users computer appears to run for the user, in another companies hands (thus breaking rule #2). Plus, Intel has no interest on thousands of Merceds biting into the slice of server sales. So this is defensive. Take out the patent, sit on it, and defend it in court.
I don't care much for software patents and I had my visa card handy this morning. gnupatent.org has been registered. Although its in my name for the moment I declare this domain to be property of the free software development community. There are already some web sites out there dedicated to this sort of thing - openpatents.org, freepatents.org, etc, and perhaps I just wasted $70 to set up something that already exists. If this is the case someone please educate us about the 'existing art' in this area :-) I will suggest that the following be the starting point for discussions regarding a charter. "gnupatent.org exists as a repository for software patents that belong to free software developers. all contributed patents are free for use in any GPL software." I think there are probably a lot of people who'd like to contribute to free software in some fashion but don't have the coding skills necessary to get involved. I propose we should form a group of 'patentors' (sp?) with the purpose of documenting & submitting for patent process any innovation found in GPL software. I envision a person in this role attached to each major project submitting patents. Hopefully there will be a few patent attorneys out there who are willing to help or already working on such things. Its now 8:13 central time and I think www.gnupatent.org will be point at www.gnu.org and gnupatent@gnupatent.org will be a valid address around 9:00 CST. If you're a wannabe patent hacker drop me a note and we'll get organized. Volunteers who knows how to run a list server and an attorney to help with the 'how to submit a software patent' FAQ would be most welcome. And let me restate that if this sort of effort already exists, is offensive to free software developers for some reason I can't fathom yet, etc, please educate me :-) I can be reached at nealr@optimumdata.com.
Which surely says that we should be opposing the patents system not Intel here?
Yes, there are some bad faith patent enforcements out there, with LZW & GIF being probably the best known example. But the real problem is surely not that they've got the patent, but that the legal system made the patent possible and so effectively required them to at least try for their own protection?
Standard disclaimer in this sort of thing - I'm British and have no idea what the patent situation is over here. And I accept that I'm discussing matters in a jurisdiction which doesn't affect me, to stop potential flames.
Greg
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!