Trend Micro Sues Barracuda Over Open Source Anti-Virus 200
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.
Prior art? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bad news for a lot of us (Score:2, Interesting)
[1] Yes I know all you geeks might be OK. But you're not the sort to open every silly email you receive. The receptionist who forwards all the "Look Out for the Terrible Good Times Virus!!!111OMGWTFBBQ" emails she receives is, and if she could be relied upon to follow good computing practices, we wouldn't need AV software in the first place.
Granting frivolous patents should be punishable (Score:4, Interesting)
If I file a patent for the process of giving names to children so they can be distinguished and it's granted, is there someone responsible for that? When a judge overturns the patent, the granter should suffer the consequences somehow.
My ISP... (Score:2, Interesting)
If so, I think I quite fancy changing ISPs. I could be paying to support this ludicrous patent.
Re:Prior art? (Score:0, Interesting)
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/index.php/t-29630.html [fedoraforum.org]
ClamAV and on-access scanning (Score:3, Interesting)
> Seeing as ClamAV doesn't have a daemon mode
The stackable filesystem team (the ones who wrote Unionfs [sunysb.edu]) put together a filesystem that uses ClamAV [sunysb.edu] to perform on-access virus scanning in the kernel.
Barracuda makes the problem worse (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that Barracuda's products are notorious for generating spam. Barracuda's engineers were informed of the problem years ago, provided with a fix -- and stubbornly refused to address the situation. It's no wonder that there are now thousands of Barracuda installations on various blacklists. (Two examples: Backscatterers [backscatterers.com] and Backscatterer.org [backscatterer.org]) Barracuda doesn't seem to care as long as they make money.
A secondary point is that Barracuda's products are NOT open-source. Oh, they're built almost entirely on open-source (an open-source operating system, an open-source mail server, an open-source anti-spam scanner, an open-source anti-virus scanner, etc.) but they're not open-source. Essentially what they've done is take all of that open-source code, slap a web front-end on it for the point-and-drool crowd, and then sell it. They're not in this to help out the Internet or stop spam or anything else admirable: they're in this to make money, and they're perfectly willing (see first point) to make the spam problem worse if it increases their profits.
They're not alone in that -- there are others out there who are in business to profit from our collective misery. An excellent way of spotting such companies is to ask the question: "What would happen if the problem they claim to address was actually solved?" If the answer to that question is "they would go out of business", then their motivation for always treating the symptoms and never treating the underlying cause will become clear.
NOT AT All Too Easy To Fix (Score:2, Interesting)
That won't work in this case. The patent is for "A system for detecting and eliminating viruses on a computer network includes a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) proxy server, for controlling the transfer of files and a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) proxy server for controlling the transfer of mail messages through the system." So for Barracuda to comply they must stop scanning e-mails for viruses in their products.
This also means that it is not the use of ClamAV per-se which is being challenged but the fact that Barracuda are providing a server which scans for e-mail viruses. No wonder they are going to fight this - it's yer basic "pay up or close down" threat.
Not that I would mind too much - Barracuda's kit has caused me no end of pain in the last year and I don't even use one!
Trend Micro and open source... (Score:3, Interesting)
If Trend Micro is really trying to prevent other companies from offering cheap solutions for anti-virus/anti-spam gateways, I would take a long hard look at how they themselves got to where they did at this point in time.
Re:Bandwagon? (Score:3, Interesting)
Phooey. Here's a fairly common scenario:
(1) Company gets questionable patent
(2) Company offers a very inexpensive license to a big-name suspected infringer
(3) big-name suspected infringer buys the license because it's a lot cheaper than litigating
(4) Company goes around to others and says "big-name suspected infringer has a license, so it must be legit. Pay up." Only, this time, Company asks for a lot more money.
The US Patent Office is still poorly equipped to handle software patents, so it lets a lot more through than it should, turning a lot of the job of proving their validity to the courts. But, patent lawsuits are expensive, so most patents are never tested.
Is it just me, or.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The patent system was invented quite some decades ago to protect inventors from other people, who just stole their inventions and made profit of it.
Back in that days, inventions were actually realy made and development was so slow, that 20 years were a reasonable time for the protection of the invention.
Then time moved on, the number of real inventions did not realy rase, but most stuff was just a mere reorganization of existing stuff, but the number of patents went up.
Nowdays, if someone realy invents something, that would make the world a better place, some big corporation ensures, that it never surfaces bigger public, because that would harm their bussiness. (Like some drafts of more effective engines, and the like).
Now we start putting patents on Software, which is like a book, and should get copyright, but why on earth sould it be patented? And where does that benefit the creation of new inventions? It clearly does the opposit in most perspectives.
So maybe I'm missing the point, but I don't realy see, why this kind of system can keep existence, even thow it slowly brings economy to ruin and helps humanity to get a step closer to selfdestruction. Hmm.. Maybe I'm a bit exagerating, please prove me wrong.
Re:Granting frivolous patents should be punishable (Score:1, Interesting)
Whenever patent is invalidated (for obviousness or prior art), the PO (the state institution which granted the patent) should cover all costs of the suits and pay large penalty for to the victim party for the hassle. After all, you can say that the patent office did nor made their research job and they STEALED the public knowledge and made it proprietary. With large enough penalty and the lawsuit costs involved they would think twice before granting a patent. Then you could bet they would fire the clumsy examiners.
Recent situation is ridiculous: The PO grants patent, cashes for the fees but is not directly involved in the lawsuit. This must change.