Microsoft, Apple Sued Over Software Update Patent

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."

Gimme a billion dollars, I'm a genius, I swear.

[The I Shing]

The link presented is what, a press release by the company doing the suing? That's a nice, unbiased viewpoint, there. I like how the "article" states "This move follows Microsoft's and Apple's delay in entering into licensing agreements with BTG on commercially reasonable terms." In other words, "we're suing them because they told us that we're full of crap and please get lost." I skimmed through the lengthy patent in question, and it's so insanely broad that I cannot imagine that it would survive a court battle with its claims intact. There's not one single mention of how any portion of the "technology" in question would actually do anything. It's just a description of how it would be used. It looks like someone patenting a type of car by claiming, "It has wheels, and it moves forward and backward and can be steered by a person or by some other type of steering control, give me a billion dollars right now, I'm a genius."

Patent system is messed up

[superpulpsicle]

There are too many holes and gaps in the patent system. Everything is so vague you can patent a flying car... just on a plastic model alone with some BS blueprints.

Re:Menuing system

[T3kno]

Or emerge -vu world for us Gentoo freaks out there.

Soooo

[FrO]

What the hell are we supposed to do when this company seeks an injunction against Microsoft's Windows Update?

lots of people will be royally f*cked...

Patents and open source

[Synn]

No doubt the "patent" also applies to various Linux distributions, but obviously they're not being sued because there's little money in them.

With all the hubub over software patents being a danger to open source software, you have to wonder whether or not they're a bigger danger to commercial companies. After all, if you're going to sue someone you're going to go after a company with money. Even better if they're public, as you might be able to extort them into settling behind the scenes since a lawsuit might hurt their share prices.

Summary

[Luveno]

Mundane Concept = Mundane Concept

Mundane Concept Online = Patent

Great Side Effect, Lousy Idea

[Dragonshed]

As much as I love to watch Microsoft feel financial pain, this is still yet another example of why software patents are a lousy idea. I shudder to think how much worse virus episodes would be if windowsupdate wasn't as convenient as it is.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Um, this is a decent patent

[kisrael]

You're crazy.

No one would have EVER thought of doing updates over a network if these guys hadn't shown the way.

Just like I'm very grateful to the nice gentleman who explained I could mow the lawn with a kind of back and forth motion...I was on the verge of turning off my lawnmower, bringing it on my back to the other side, and then starting it up again.

Re:Soooo

[Tim C]

Definitely vote b). I've not read the patent (well, this *is* /.), but assuming that there's nothing OS-specific in it, this would apply to just about any GUIfied automatic update tool, including those that are increasingly featuring in applications. (Doesn't Eclipse have an option to check for updates at startup?)

Not only that, but RedHat at least has an equivalent tool to the Windows automatic updates tool, at least as far as I can tell from looking over a coworker's shoulder (I'm a Mandrake guy myself, when using Linux)

That's tough

[flez]

While it seems that this Reisman guy may have been working on this technology since 1990, the patent wasn't filed until 2000.

So I think MS and Apple would just have to show they started using this tech before 1999 - i.e. it was public IP before the patent was filed.

Lesson: Patent early, patent often.

EVERYTHING is obvious in hindsight.

[pclminion]

It's so easy today to say it's an "obvious" idea to send software updates over a network with user selection and confirmation. But was it really so obvious in the early 1990's?

I hate software-related patents as much as the next guy, but the continual cry of "That's obvious" is getting tiring. If it was so obvious, why was there such a long period of time between the patent and when MS and Apple started using a similar system? Clearly, it took them years before they "saw the light."

Past damages?

[yeremein]

The suit asks for unspecified damages for past infringing activity and an injunction against future use of the technology.

This is ludicrous. BTG shouldn't be allowed to wait for ten years to enforce their patent, and then sue for past damages. If BTG were being damaged, BTG should have filed suit earlier. This is nothing but a shakedown.

The good thing about it is that if Microsoft gets pissed off about submarine patents, they have the money and political influence to do something about it, like lobby Congress to reform patents. Unless, of course, the perceived benefits of their patent arsenal outweigh the occasional nuisance lawsuit.

376 Claims

[rumblin'rabbit]

I agree. There are 376 claims to this patent, which is quite spectactular - most patents have a few dozen. However, claim 1 must stand on its own, and it really does not seem terribly inventive.

This is a disease which afflicts the patent system. People are not patenting brilliant, innovative, inobvious ideas, but just "staking out territory".

Also, this patent was filed in 2000. If this work dates from the 1980's, as is stated in the post, then an enabling disclosure or marketing of the technology may have occurred before 1999, and the patent will be questionable.

It may be that Applie and Microsoft think they can attack this patent, which is why they didn't cut a deal.

Re:Blood sucking vultures

[gokeln]

Difference: IMHO, Professional Inventors actually try to market their ideas- turn them into something useful- help people- build a profitable business. Think of Edison, Bell, etc. They invented and then put it out there so everyone benefited from their creativity. These guys make the patent, then hide out monitoring the market, until they find an "infringer", and then call out the lawyers. That's no benefit to anyone except themselves & the BSV attorneys.

Re:Menuing system

[Jaysyn]

Oh you mean a webpage with programs to download?

Jaysyn

BTG

[krygny]

"BTG creates value by investing in intellectual property and technology development, and ... " blah blah blah

Translation: We sue people.

Re:Patent system is messed up

[dgatwood]

And, more importantly, since it would have been patented previously, it would no longer be patentable, no matter how innovative. Thus, there is no incentive to ever design it. More proof that in a sufficiently modern society, patents tend to discourage innovation, rather than encourage it, but I digress.

Non-proprietary network?

[crawdaddy]

I skimmed a bit of the patent and it refers to the software being offered from a non-proprietary network. Does that mean that if Apple and MS prove that their networks are, in fact, "proprietary", then the patent doesn't even apply to them?

Re:this might stop some software patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Programming Language creators should include a provision in their license that forces programmers to use the copyright system and not the patent system with programs written in their language.

You do realize that programs in every language are compiled as machine code (or virtual machine code)? Are you trying to suggest that programming languages should be patented and licensed, so nobody can use them without agreeing to the restrictive terms you suggest? That's quite possibly the worst idea I've ever heard. Have you ever developed anything you wished to profit on?

Patent wasnt awarded til 2003

[billybob]

The patent wasnt awarded to them until April 2003 according to the story. So it's only been about a year.

Not that I'm defending them or anything :p Just FYI

This smacks of malice...

[DrPizza]

...and the doctrine of laches says that's not allowed. They could almost certainly have asserted their right years ago. Windows Update has been around for yonks.

Re:this might stop some software patents

[Dun Malg]

Programming Language creators should include a provision in their license that forces programmers to use the copyright system and not the patent system

Non-starter. Programming language creators don't have the power to dictate how their language is used after the fact, and if they try to make people sign a contract before giving them a compiler, no one will use their language.

Re:Gimme a billion dollars, I'm a genius, I swear.

[It'sYerMam]

What happened to that "non-obvious" part?

Computers need updates. Obvious. There needs to be a way to display these updates. Obvious. This can be done in a moronic way: play an animation of all the products scrolling along on a conveyer belt, or sensibly: in a list. Also. Obvious.
The computer doesn't need software it already has. Don't display it. Obvious.
The list has to get from the remote machine to the local one. Obvious.
The updates also have to be sent. Obvious.

Claim 4 means an "Are you sure?" Dialog.

I think I've justified what I'm going to cry in a few moments.
...
...
BULLSHIT!

Re:Soooo

[LabRat007]

Microsoft has more money. In America that makes you right. So, Microsoft will win either by endless court actions or by purchaseing the other company. See - no worries :-)

Re:Menuing system

[dasmegabyte]

Those of us who have enough experience with gentoo to learn not to trust portage will probably have to worry. Emerge -up offers a "menu" of what's to be updated...

Re:Menuing system

[FirstOne]

"This patent has to be struck down for being overly broad. It patents the entire idea of looking at information already on the local station and then downloading new stuff from a server. Surely USENET is prior art for this even though it wasn't specifically limited to software, and didn't automatically install the software."

Agreed ... from RFC977 [faqs.org], Brian Kantor (U.C. San Diego), Phil Lapsley (U.C. Berkeley) February 1986

"NNTP specifies a protocol for the distribution, inquiry, retrieval, and posting of news articles using a reliable stream-based transmission of news among the ARPA-Internet community."

Note: Usenet was not limited to TCP/IP. Before the internet was deployed we used modems, 800 numbers and uucp to transfer the article streams. The protocol allowed the receiving system to specify which newsgroups to fetch articles and updates from. Each server only fetched what it didn't have. And one shouldn't forget about the NNRP protocol used between server and clients which uses many of the same principles.

B.T.W. In unix land we used CRON to automatically schedule NNTP/UUCP updates.

Also from the RFC.."Such news provides for the rapid dissemination of items of interest such as software bug fixes,"

As for menu based stuff.. Virtually all of the old text clients RN, Tin, NN news readers had curses driven menus (text of course). Xn and large [newsreaders.com] number of other news readers cover the GUI arena. Heck, I've been using the Agent [forteinc.com] since 1995.

The patent appears to have been filed in Apr 20, 2000.
Microsoft had their windows 98 update feature deployed long before that date.
I think that just about covers most of the Method and Apparatus claims.

As usual, the USPTO has once again demonstrated it's gross incompetence.