Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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).
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
1) Read SlashDot regularly
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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
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-- 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.
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--
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.