Trend Micro Sues Barracuda Over Open Source Anti-Virus

Anti-virus firm Trend Micro is suing Barracuda Networks over their use of the open source anti-virus product ClamAV. The issue is Trend Micro's patent on 'anti-virus detection on an SMTP or FTP gateway'. Companies like Symantec and McAfee are already paying licensing fees to Trend Micro. Groklaw carries the word from Barracuda that they intend to fight this case, and are seeking information on prior art to bring to trial. Commentary on the O'Reilly site notes (in strident terms) the strange reality of patents gone bad, while a post to the C|Net site explores the potential ramifications for open source security projects. "Barracuda has been able to leverage open source to bring down the cost of security. Early on Barracuda was blocking spam and viruses at roughly 1/10 the price of the nearest proprietary competitor (that was only selling an antivirus solution). Barracuda has helped to bring down prices across the board, and it has been able to do so because of open source. More open source equals less spam and more security. Trend Micro is effectively trying to raise the price of security." Slashdot and Linux.com are both owned by SourceForge.

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Re:Prior art?

[_KiTA_]

Why not say that this behavior is the inadvertent result of placing 2 products, an SMTP gateway, and an antivirus client, side by side on the same server? the gateway stores the mail in a temporary store, whereupon the antivirus just happens to sanitize it, before the mail is again sent on it's way. This is obviousness in the extreme.


That's a good idea, you should patent it.

"Virus scanning of cache and temporary files before end user utilization."

Err

[Vexorian]

I guess I'll wait for a new protocol to come and patent "Fighting virus on XX protocol" That should do it. Man, this patent is so retarded, Trend Micro should be ashamed for ever filing it...

patent idea reversal

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the best play is to use the bad patent system and patent an antivirus system with included smtp and ftp abilties... because in the eyes of the patent office, this is completely different from an smtp and ftp system with antivirus abilities.

Re:Yes

[rben]

>The hobbyist software creator didn't exist in large part thirty years ago

Damn, I just vanished in a puff of logic!

Re:Hang on a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you have done is morally equivalent to stealing a CD from a record store. You're a thief.

Re:Yes

[prelelat]

Mario was a great inventor coming up with all sorts of ideas. As time went on Mario couldn't keep up with all of his ideas, he didn't know what to do. So he wrote down the process that he used to come up with those ideas so that he could hire others to think things for him so that he wouldn't loose his ideas. Weeks after this started employees quit working and started their own inventions using Mario's method of creating.

Mario was furious and went to court he won, he had prior art. So after that he filed for a patent on all of his ways of making ideas. Mario now owned any intelligent thought. He renamed it Mario's idea machine, people had to pay him an annual fee of 200 dollars to have 2 good ideas a year, anymore and they would have to purchase extra licenses at a greater cost. Mario no longer had to have ideas of his own, he had a workshop of idea people, and the whole world had to pay him to have ideas. But there was a problem, no one wanted to have ideas because they couldn't afford to have them. People became stupid as having good ideas was no longer an excepted thing to do. The people in Mario's shop never came up with new and exciting ideas anymore because they were too busy fighting lawsuits against people who had ideas such as the pirate brain. The world stopped, hunger set in, the population decreased. Finally when the patent was about to expire Mario's great great grandchild had a great idea, extend the patent another 10 years. The law passed, only because by this time it was only accepted to have stupid ideas, seeing as how all the good ideas cost money.

Finally the patent expired, all that were left looked like mindless cavemen. They lived in shells of homes, with little to know food. All that was spoken were grunts, people had been afraid litigation for so long they were afraid to say something smart. Forest and animals have overgrown most of the cities, people had been living off of canned spam for years.

Moral of the story is stupid patents ruin society, stop it.