There's so much prior art here it's not funny. For example, Executive Systems first published XTree for DOS (later XTreeGold) in April, 1985. It was the absence of this functionality in MS/DOS that make the functionality so popular.
This is just another example of how the software patent system is truly messed up and needs (and hopefully will get) a serious overhaul.
There is no way they will win a case on the basis that in-memory modification of their code is a legal violation.
This reminds me of a story. Years ago, I was involved in the development of a software product called Recalc+. The purpose of the product was to launch the user's copy of Lotus 1-2-3 and then dynamically patch 1-2-3's math routines in memory to implement code that talked to the 8087 numeric co-processor. Depending on the math function being calculated, the performance speedup was 2x to 30x. We started selling 8087 co-processor chips as bundled add-ons to the software. You'd pay $99 for Recalc+ and $300 for the chip needed to use it.
At that time unbeknownst to us, Lotus was working on an update to 1-2-3 in which a significant part of the upgrade appeal was going to be that it would support the 8087 chip directly. However, we were already selling a relatively low cost add-on that did this already. They knew they had no legal right to stop us (and keep in mind we're talking about the instigators of the "Look and Feel" lawsuits here) so they decided to make it harder for us to have our product work. They began to regularly recompile Lotus 1-2-3 so that their math routines would load into different memory locations. They did this to defeat the auto-patcher code in Recalc+. We started to find this out because customers would complain that their copy of Recalc+ wasn't working. After a little detective work, we determined that they were re-mastering Lotus 1-2-3 on a regular basis and putting different compiled builds into the market! We began to scour the country for copies of Lotus 1-2-3 with different file date stamps on the software and recompiled Recalc+ so that it would be able to detect which of the dozens of builds of Lotus 1-2-3 was installed on the customer's computer.
This cat and mouse game played out until Lotus acquired the company.
(As an interesting side note, we directly sold so many 8087 chips that we drove Intel's price down from $300 to about $100 in a matter of months.)
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There's so much prior art here it's not funny. For example, Executive Systems first published XTree for DOS (later XTreeGold) in April, 1985. It was the absence of this functionality in MS/DOS that make the functionality so popular. This is just another example of how the software patent system is truly messed up and needs (and hopefully will get) a serious overhaul.
can we have a Spammer's Code of Conduct?
This reminds me of a story. Years ago, I was involved in the development of a software product called Recalc+. The purpose of the product was to launch the user's copy of Lotus 1-2-3 and then dynamically patch 1-2-3's math routines in memory to implement code that talked to the 8087 numeric co-processor. Depending on the math function being calculated, the performance speedup was 2x to 30x. We started selling 8087 co-processor chips as bundled add-ons to the software. You'd pay $99 for Recalc+ and $300 for the chip needed to use it.
At that time unbeknownst to us, Lotus was working on an update to 1-2-3 in which a significant part of the upgrade appeal was going to be that it would support the 8087 chip directly. However, we were already selling a relatively low cost add-on that did this already. They knew they had no legal right to stop us (and keep in mind we're talking about the instigators of the "Look and Feel" lawsuits here) so they decided to make it harder for us to have our product work. They began to regularly recompile Lotus 1-2-3 so that their math routines would load into different memory locations. They did this to defeat the auto-patcher code in Recalc+. We started to find this out because customers would complain that their copy of Recalc+ wasn't working. After a little detective work, we determined that they were re-mastering Lotus 1-2-3 on a regular basis and putting different compiled builds into the market! We began to scour the country for copies of Lotus 1-2-3 with different file date stamps on the software and recompiled Recalc+ so that it would be able to detect which of the dozens of builds of Lotus 1-2-3 was installed on the customer's computer.
This cat and mouse game played out until Lotus acquired the company.
(As an interesting side note, we directly sold so many 8087 chips that we drove Intel's price down from $300 to about $100 in a matter of months.)