Microsoft, Apple Sued Over Software Update Patent 532
mark_wilkins writes "Microsoft and Apple have been sued by Teleshuttle Technologies, LLC, alleging that their online software updating technology infringes a patent on providing online updates to software with a menuing system to permit the user to pick the updates. Apparently the work on which the patent is based supposedly goes back to 1990."
Here's the patent in question... (Score:2, Informative)
Shakespear was right (Score:2, Informative)
Just like every other tort or liability lawsuit, the lawyers on both side will get more money out of this than anyone else. Lawyers don't file suits about right and wrong, just about their bank accounts.
Re:Um, this is a decent patent (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Menuing system (Score:3, Informative)
Re:decent patent - NOT (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Menuing system (Score:3, Informative)
Not in its entirety, eh?
Well, the title is "Method and system for distributing updates by presenting directory of software available for user installation that is not already installed on user station".[emphasis added] Certainly implies new software, but my eyes started crossing trying to decipher the "multiplicities" and "pluralties" in the abstract.
Re:Gimme a billion dollars, I'm a genius, I swear. (Score:3, Informative)
One of the things you explicitly CANNOT patent is a business process. A business process is not considered a device or invention. To patent something, you must describe a physical device (which software has been redefined to be) that performs a specific, non-obvious task.
Re:Shakespear was right (Score:2, Informative)
Shakespeare said nothing of the sort that we know of. One of the "characters" in one of his "plays" did, however. Fact: he wrote lots of plays. Fact 2: there were lots of characters in all of his plays.
I'd suggest googling for Henry VI, but without having read the play in its entirety, you'll not understand the context (and hence, meaning) of the phrase you quoted.
As for the legal system, I don't know where to start. It might help to remember that suits are filed on matters of law. Justice -- you'll have to look elsewhere for -- judges and juries are too busy applying the law than entertaining philosophical constructs.
Prior art. (Score:4, Informative)
HelixCode (then Ximian, then acquired by Novell) produced an installer and updater that shipped in March 2000 and pre-dates the patent applications and did what is described there:
* tracking existing software.
* identifying new software packages.
* identify software updates available.
* install those, resolve dependencies.
* communicated with a server to fetch this information.
* Worked for Debian and RPM systems.
* It used HTML to render the information (like
this patent claim says).
This patent contains 376 claims, most of them
regurgitations of the previous one, and most of
them were done.
I remember that MandrakeSoft had something
similar, but I can not remember if they had it
before or after, I remember thinking that this
was a significant value added over the Red Hat
distribution (back in the day when Mandrake
was a relatively small fork).
Miguel
Re:Gimme a billion dollars, I'm a genius, I swear. (Score:5, Informative)
With non-software patents (i.e., where the invention/innovation lies in a novel way of using physical forces/material), how far exactly you are allowed to abstract is mainly limited by three things:
- You can't abstract the claims until only the forces of nature you are harnessing remain, because those are not patentable;
- You can't abstract the forces of nature you harness out and remain with some generic algorithm/method that could apply to anything, because then your invention (novel way to use those forces) is no longer part of the claims;
- You're of course also limited by prior art (you invent a new car, but other cars already exist -> you can't claim all 4-wheeled vehicles etc) and whatever the patent office deems too general (after all, society grants you a monopoly in return for disclosure of an invention, so those two should -in theory- be proportionate).
However, if you look at software patents, then- There are no unpatentable basic "forces of information";
- Since what you start with is already some abstract method/algorithm, no matter how much you abstract it further, you can always argue that your invention is still embodied in those claims;
- This one is the only thing left.
The net result is indeed that you end up with ridiculously broad claims in pretty much all cases with software patents, even if the innovation itself was not as stupid as in this case. An example is the base patent on MP3 compression [espacenet.com], whose claims cover all iterative music compression schemes in which an entropic encoder (such as Huffman encoding) is used in the loop and whereby the loop stops when you've reached the desired bit rate.Re:Blood sucking vultures (Score:5, Informative)
Look at the Dyson vacuum cleaner. Dyson invented the bagless vacuum, patented it, and approached other vacuum companies to see if they were interested. Only after he was turned down did he actually start his own company. And after his vacuums took off, other companies copied his patent, were sued, and lost. That, to me, is perfectly desirable and just.
Granted, I can't tell if the company in question here approached MS and friends (and enemies) to see if they wanted to license their patent, but if they had and were refused, I have to stand on their side.
Re:Patents are not so evel after all, if you think (Score:1, Informative)
But that's exactly what's wrong with software patents! They let you patent ideas, not only how you implement the idea.
Yes, those are examples of technology that was created because there was a need for them. But what if a company had patented not .gif and .mp3, but "technology to view images on a computer" and "technology for listening to music on a computer"?
Re:Um, this is a decent patent (Score:1, Informative)
1994 - filed original app
1996 - filed a continuation-in-part (CIP) of the 1990 app, adding new text and/or figures
2000 - filed this continuation of (i.e. identical to) the 1996 app
...which is a Continuation-in-Part of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/251,824, filed on May 31, 1994, ... which [issued] as U.S. Pat. No. 5,420,820 on May 30, 1995, and U.S. application Ser. No. 08/982,157, filed on Dec. 1, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,125,388 ... which is a Continuation of the aforementioned Ser. No.08/251,724 filed May 31, 1994 (now U.S. Pat. No. 5,694,546).
Every new app is allowed to add new claims and keep the old prior art date. But, when these guys added new text and figures in 1996, they may have reset their prior art date to 1996. That means that some of the claims get a 1996 date and some get a 1994 date (if they don't rely on any of the new text added in the 1996 CIP). Where the heck did anyone get 1990? From the patent:
LIST OF RELATED APPLICATIONS
This is a combined Continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 08/641,010, filed on Apr. 29, 1996,
YIIALBIANYL. GYOGDL. YMNO.
Re:Menuing system (Score:5, Informative)
Two things can happen, either the patent can be invalid, or the patent can be too broad. if an independent claim is invalid, all dependent claims are invalid as well. If the judge decides the scope is too broad, then the independent claim is restricted to only be valid with one or more of the dependent claims.
In this case, if the judge finds that software updates aren't patentable, then none of the dependent claims matter. But, the judge can find that claim 1 is too broad, (perhaps theres prior art for that claim) in which case he may find that the addition of an HTML viewer is novel and patentable.
You are missing something (Score:3, Informative)
You've completely confused patents vs. copyright. Copyrights protect the expression of an idea, and your arguments are more-or-less correct w.r.t. copyrights.
Patents exist to protect an idea. And yes, you can come up with the idea completely independently, and express it differently, but still be in violation of a patent. That's pretty much a requirement for patents to be useful. Otherwise you could just look at the patent but claim you hadn't.
Re:The lightning rod (Score:3, Informative)
A military brat friend of mine was born in Osaka, Japan. He is not Japanese. He has no right to Japanese citizenship. He is American.
In some cases, and in some times and places, parantage is as, or more, important than place of birth.
On that April night of 1775 no one yelled "The British are coming." That would have been nonsensical. They were all British. The yell was "The regulars are coming."
At the time of Franklin all British were subjects and all subjects were British, either natural born or naturalised and the American colonies were not even self governing dominions. They were British, as Alaska was American at the time of my birth, even though it was not yet a state. Had I been born in Alaska I would still be a natural born American. Franklin was a natural born British subject of natural born British subject parents and grandparents, just as were British subjects born in London.
Modern citizenship laws were not enacted until 1914.
Go ahead and pick all the holes you want though. If no one did I would have less opportunity to close them. I'm hardly always right, but I do like to get righter over time. It's all anyone can do.
KFG
Re:this might stop some software patents (Score:3, Informative)
Plus, patents don't last as long as copyrights.
Re:Menuing system (Score:4, Informative)
And, then... does the RedHat server send a customized list of software based on the uploaded list back down?
That is my reading of claim # 1 of the patent.
And, both MS and Apple update do just this very thing.
I've not used RedHat since 6.0... but, I am familiar with Mandrake and Debian update systems. And, while IANAL, I don't see them in violation of at least claim # 1.
These systems send a generic list of available software to any computer requesting the list... and the client determines what to download.
Never is a list of installed software sent to the "update server".
Re:Um, this is a decent patent (Score:1, Informative)
2/12/99: How the Windows Update Tool Determines if an Update Is Valid [microsoft.com]