Akamai Wins Lawsuit to Protect Obvious Patent 173
brandaman writes "Akamai, the largest content delivery network (CDN) with about 70% market share, recently won its lawsuit against the against second largest CDN - Limelight Networks. The suit asserted that Limelight was infringing on Akamai's patent which, upon examination, seems to be somewhat on the obvious side. 'In accordance with the invention, however, a base HTML document portion of a Web page is served from the Content Provider's site while one or more embedded objects for the page are served from the hosting servers, preferably, those hosting servers near the client machine. By serving the base HTML document from the Content Provider's site, the Content Provider maintains control over the content.' Limelight is obviously not pleased, and this is not the first lawsuit Akamai has won regarding its patents."
Re:It may be obvious but (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently only in the specific case of having the "other ones" be distributed across the network and with the "closest" server to the client chosen to download the content from.
I suppose that things like mirrors, etc. don't count because in that case the user typically chooses what they believe to be the closest server rather than the host or akamai.
Google has used Akamai's network (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'm in trouble now. (Score:5, Informative)
The way Akamai works is it distributes the "heavy duty" content like images, scripts. to its own servers all around the world. It then lets its customers (like E*Trade, to pick one actual example) modify their static HTML content to refer to those images in a special way. For example, the E*Trade home page has the following link in it for one of its images:
https://a248.e.akamai.net/n/248/1777/20080228.0/www.etrade.com/images/prospect/topGrad.gif [akamai.net]
The url is specially encoded in such a way that when your local DNS server queries a248.e.akamai.net, the DNS server returns a server located physically near you. So if you're in England a248.e.akamai.net might resolve to an IP located in Londan, but in New York City it would resolve to an IP somewhere in New York. Then when the http request is sent, Akamais servers decode that annoyingly long URL to determine which customer of theirs it is and serve up the correct image. It's actually a fairly complex and fast process. If the server that you're directed to doesn't actually have the image locally then that Akamai server will query another nearby Akamai server. If that server also doesn't have it then it'll actually pull the image down from a master server that E*Trade uploaded the image to.
You can test this out yourself by looking up the IP address of a248.e.akamai.net yourself. Locally you'll get one IP. If you do a google search for dns lookup tools you can submit that domain name to other sites to look it up and you'll get totally different IP's that are physically close to wherever that domain lookup tool runs from.
The bottom line is that it's a prety complex process that involves both the use of DNS to ensure you download large chunks of content from physically near servers as well as some pretty sophisticated caching in the background to make sure static content is delivered rapidly no matter where in the world you are.
I used to work at Akamai so I have a pretty good firsthand knowledge of how their stuff works. I doubt a lot of their algorithms they use would pass the "obviousness" test...
Only parts are very obvious (Score:5, Informative)
As in many of these "obvious patent" trolling articles, the article/summary oversimplify the patent. The patent does not just claim click here, fetch there redirection which is used by just about every major site, but algorithms for doing the load balancing etc.
If you read some of the claims, then you'll see that various algorithms are used for load balancing and other purposes. While these might be obvious to some, they are extremely obvious to all.
The test of "obvious" is also not that clear cut. IIRC, the tests is "reasonably obvious to practitioners of the art". This test should be applied to the state of the art as at the time of the patent, because a patent "teaches" the industry and therefore after the disclosure the less-than-obvious become obvious.
Re:So they can sue the Internet???? (Score:3, Informative)
What a ridiculous summary (Score:5, Informative)
READ THE CLAIMS TO FIND OUT WHAT IS BEING COVERED BY THE PATENT!!
Here is claim 1:
1. A distributed hosting framework operative in a computer network in which users of client machines connect to a content provider server, the framework comprising:
a routine for modifying at least one embedded object URL of a web page to include a hostname pretended to a domain name and path;
a set of content servers, distinct from the content provider server, for hosting at least some of the embedded objects of web pages that are normally hosted by the content provider server;
at least one first level name server that provides a first level domain name service (DNS) resolution; and
at least one second level name server that provides a second level domain name service (DNS) resolution;
wherein in response to requests for the web page, generated by the client machines the web page including the modified embedded object URL is served from the content provider server and the embedded object identified by the modified embedded object URL is served from a given one of the content servers as identified by the first level and second level name servers.
Doesn't seem so obvious now, does it?
The second is the fact is that Akamai is a very innovative company that has pioneered a lot of distributed content delivery starting with the early days of the internet. In my mind it is very obvious that they would have a lot of valid patent material. They are most assuredly NOT patent trolls, and in fact have brought many innovations based on some very advanced work to commercial fruition. It is insane that their work is being shown in this light by Slashdot.
The company was founded by an MIT graduate student (Dan Lewin) and an applied math professor from MIT, Tom Leighton who is currently head of the algorithms group at at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Lewin was tragically killed when AA flight 11 was crashed during the 9-11 terrorist attack.
This article is one of the most ridiculous ever posted by Slashdot.
Re:Non-obviousness - mod parent up (Score:3, Informative)
Akamai Made Microsoft Run on Linux (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I'm in trouble now. (Score:3, Informative)
They are now under the "business process" umbrella. The courts are accepting these so far.
Genuity in 1997, "Hopscotch" protocol (Score:5, Informative)
I found this article ( http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1997_Dec_10/ai_20053332 [findarticles.com] ) rather easily, going back to 1997.
Re:I'm in trouble now. (Score:4, Informative)
I've spent plenty of time, as I said in my post I've actually read all of the Ssupreme Court rulings on the subject.
A number is not an "invention". An equation is not an "invention". A calculation is not an "invention". Mental information processing is not an invention. Mental information processing does not magically become a patentable invention when you OBVIOUSLY use a calculator to accelerate/automate it. Mental information processing does not magically become a patentable invention when you OBVIOUSLY use a computer to accelerate/automate it. Mental information processing does not magically become a patentable invention when you OBVIOUSLY do it on the internet to accelerate/automate it.
The Supreme Court has explicitly ruled that no possible algorithm can ever qualify as "novel" or "non-obvious" for patent purposes. Therefore no possible software can ever qualify as novel, no possible software can ever qualify as non-obvious, no possible software can ever be an invention. There is nothing novel or non-obvious in blatantly using an ordinary computer to carry out that "non-novel" "obvious" calculation. Sticking the words "on a computer" at the end of a mathematical information manipulation does not magically turn it into a patentable invention.
It doesn't matter if you are the first person to write down some particular number, it cannot be "novel". It doesn't matter how many digits long your number is, it cannot be "non-obvious". No possible math, no possible information processing, no possible mental process, no possible algorithm, no possible software, can ever be an invention. As the Supreme Court said, they can never qualify as novel or non-obvious for the same reason that laws of physics are never treated as novel or non-obvious for patent purposes. An invention may make use of gravity, but G=M1*M2/R^2 is not an invention and it is treated as non-novel and as obvious, even if you are the first person to figure it out.
Chemistry and software are not really that different philosophically
No matter how long I *think* about a chemical reaction I will never actually make any molecules.
Physical objects and physical processes are philosophically different than math/calculations/mental-processes.
Physical objects and physical processes are concretely different than math/calculations/mental-processes.
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Re:I'm in trouble now. (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, so then you can enlighten me, the half-knowing. To my knowledge the whole mess started with the Supreme Court rebuking the USPTO in the Diamond vs. Diehr case, where the USPTO was kind of ordered to grant a patent on essentially software. Yes, I read the patent and some resources around it. Yes, the Supreme Court held the earlier appeals for non-patentable. Though in Diamond vs. Diehr they decided
On the other hand, when a claim containing a mathematical formula implements or applies that formula in a structure or process which, when considered as a whole, is performing a function which the patent laws were designed to protect (e. g., transforming or reducing an article to a different state or thing), then the claim satisfies the requirements [...]
And there was nothing new in the matter, if I am not mistaken, in curing rubber. But the formula as executed on a general purpose computer, in combination, was considered patentable. True, in the sense of 'software patents' the Supreme Court never endorsed such as singular patentable items. To me, it was a mistake nevertheless, a huge mistake to leave the formulation as is. Software as mathematical formula was still thrown out, but in real life, also in the first year of the 'PC' (1981), software would never be written not to be run on a (general purpose) computer. Literally, the Supreme Court did not allow software patents, de facto it invited them. In hindsight, one might assume a higher level of foresight by the creme of the creme of judges than to leave the indecisive, sorry, blurb that they produced. "implements or applies that formula in a structure or process" is so generally crappy that I am asking, seriously, wasn't this exactly opening the can of worms? Am I right when I assume that to disallow software patents as such, but to instruct software in combination with a computer as patentable, to be indecisive because both belong together: software needs a computer to run and a computer needs software to do something useful?
Only recently (I am too lazy to look up the details, it was something about brakes) have they decided that combining a well-known feature of 50 years ago with a well-known recent feature (microcontroller) to achieve the expected effect was obvious.
It seems you want to shift the blame to the lower courts. Maybe you can. But when a judge in a lower court would try to get the gist out of that ruling, she could in principle only arrive at the conclusion that software to be run on hardware would be novel and inventive. The tragedy of that Diamond vs Diehr case was, AFAICS, that the result was not unexpected: curing rubber. Only in a slightly different manner. The case law therefore was clear: An expected outcome, achieved through a novel combination of a non-novel general purpose computer with a non-novel algorithm developed into a sequence of code, fulfills the requirement of 101.
Correct me if I see this in a wrong light.