Transparent Web Caching Patented

JohnQPublic writes "BIND author and all-around Internet personality Paul Vixie and Mirror Image Internet have recently received US patent 6,581,090, specifically '..technology that efficiently stores and retrieves content requests and balances Web traffic between origin servers to improve performance and speed' - sounds an awful lot like what Akamai do. There's a press release from last week that gives some lovely 'details', including this little gem from CEO Alexander M. Vik: 'We anticipate that these patents and our technology solutions will encourage large groups of corporations to become customers of Mirror Image services. We also recognize that this technology is a critical component of other content delivery services and weâ(TM)ll be attempting to work cooperatively with our competitors and their customers to address this issue.' Can you say 'patent infringement suit'?"

squid

This better not affect squid.

If it does, I can see a number of ISPs going belly up due to the increased cost of traffic.

Re:squid

I strongly suspect that this was actually a defensive patent filing. Of course such filings frequently fall into the wrong hands. I suspect that the real issue here would be interference between the mirror image patent and the Akamai patents. Both are in my view unenforceable, both because of prior art and in the case of the Akamai patents failure to disclose relevant information.

Yet again we see the old patent lawyer trick of stating large amounts of prior art in the description then making claims that dircetly cover the prior art. Essentially the inventive step here is claiming ownership of all possible embodiments of an idea that have not already been invented - the fact that the contributions of the inventor are miniscule not being considered relevant in the corrupt USPTO system.

If this would affect squid, it would be a very strong case of prior art.

There are much earlier examples of prior art. Tim Berners-Lee described the basic concept of Web caches in his CHEP/Annecy address in 1992. CERN distributed a caching Web proxy in 1993, the HTTP specifications were extensively adapted in 1995 to support cache use with input from Jeff Moghul and Jim Gettys. People can also find W3C notes that were published arround that time that describe extended cache architectures by Phill Hallam-Baker. This was the original purpose of the W3C log format.

The Akamai scheme is also compromised by prior art. The W3C deployed a system for serving web pages from multiple servers in 1995. Requests from Europe went to the French server, first at CERN, then Inria. This is a particularly important piece of prior art since I told the alleged inventor about it and it was in any case operating out of the same floor as one of the alleged inventors. Rohit Khare and myself had extensive discussions concerning the alleged invention but we are not listed as inventors, another probloem for the Akamai patent.

Looking at the later claims some would appear to be pe-empted by the Open-Market patent application several years earlier, this was an EU patent filing that was hastily withdrawn after a ton of prior art was dumped on the applicants.

The idea of transparent web caching is not new either. TIS created a transparent Web proxy sometime before 1998, the concept of web proxies and web caches have always been closely related. The combination is both obvious and covered by prior art.

Also there are extensive discussions on the HTTP WG mailoing list and the www-talk list before that on the topic of transparent caches. These are generally considered a bad thing.

What should happen here is prosecution of the USPTO under RICO. Their activities resemble a protection racket more closely with every corrupt patent they issue.

Re:squid

Oops [oops-cache.org] is a more than worthy alternative, that was developed outside the US. I'm not sure how patent law applies in such a situation.

Re:squid

I believe the patent predates Squid, so there could be a problem to whatever degree that Squid infringes. Just because a later developer is open source does not mean that the original claim was invalid.

However, reading the patent carefully, you realize that it actually only describes a very specific solution. Specific enough that it truly is describing a solution, not a problem. And specific enough that it might legitimately be considered novel for the time it was filed (I really don't have time to search the source code of all proxy servers in the 1996 time frame -- let someone with a finanicial stake do that).

Specifically the patent deals with websites that are identified by their IP Address and where certain content (by default all) is held in an alternate (and presumably closer) server.

There is nothing in this patent about determining if the content is fresh. The description presumes that the cached copies were pushed by the server.

So this would only seem to proxy servers that are transparent to the user, but not to the servers. The proxy servers that are of most interest to an ISP would either be transparent to the server as well, or more of an akamai style strategy where the first-response page is localized to directly fetch pre-positioned material from edge caches.

Interestingly, the patent seems to be worded to cover a single box which handles both the intercept and the decision to proxy, but does not handle the actual proxy response. A firewall transparently redirecting a port to a proxy server is prior art. The basic claim to being novel here is that the client does not have to be configured to use the proxy, and diversions only take place if certain content is requested, non-proxied sites are passed through "unaffected" (which is a false claim, BTW, which I'll deal with in a moment).

There are some serious omissions in the description, would could undermine its enforceability.

• It speaks about identifying "requests" and forwarding those that are not "web requests" to their original destination "unmodified". It fails to disclose that TCP does not naturally delimit "requests", and that identification of a complete "web request" is a complex matter.
• It does not disclose that "other requests" are not amenable to the same parsing algorithms as for "web requests", and that in fact they must be dealt with at another protocol layer.
• It does not disclose that there can only be a single "request" per session, and a single "reply" from either the original source or the alternate. Specifically there is no disclosure on how to splice responses, which it obviously does not do, or on the lifespan of a session that makes the short-version possible.

Perhaps most importantly, the invention described here is working as an application level gateway. It is incapable of quickly identifying TCP connections that do not require proxying and leaving those connection truly unaltered. Terminating a TCP connection, examing the first request in it, and then deciding to actually forward the request to the real server is not "transparent".

The "preferred embodiement" either a) deferred establishiing the connection until the "true source" was to be known (clearly unacceptable, what if the "true source" is not accepting connections?, or b) established the connection, and then aborted it, once the decision to substitute was made.

The implications are not discussed or disclosed. Which isn't surprising, because this patent describes techniques that only work for HTTP 1.0

Caching for HTTP 1.1 is a new problem. You have to deal with caching hints, persistent connections, cookies that might affect the material supplied, etc.

akamai overseas ?

if they move all their assets to India or other low-cost countries, they hit a double whammy : cheaper labour + no pattent fees.

The US pattent office is well on it's way to push every profitable tech offshore... hey, maybe I should pattent that !

Re:akamai overseas ?

if they move all their assets to India or other low-cost countries

Isn't the only added value of Akamai that their servers are always close to you? Moving to India wouldn't do them any good. They'd still need servers in the US.

Re:akamai overseas ?

"The US pattent office is well on it's way to push every profitable tech offshore... hey, maybe I should pattent that !"

You are dead on there... The United States is PATENTING itself out of it's tech lead.

Patents when they work as originally intended are supposed to ENCOURAGE, not stifle innovation. Our current "rubber stamp" patent process encourages innovation only in the Microsoft meaning of the word: command and coercion.

Software and business method patents should NOT be granted. Patents should only be granted for MATERIAL things, actual PRODUCTS.

But, this is the 21st Century world. Intellectual Property is the new oil, the new gold, and the rules are set up so that only the largest multi corporate cartels can own, develop, or exploit any of it.

Anyone outside of that strata who comes up with a new idea will either find it stolen from them (because they can't afford to patent it or even FIGHT patent infringement by a corp), or will find themselves sued out of existance by any IP cartel that finds itself threatened.

Look at Napster... One of the last truly "killer apps" invented. Instead of BUYING it and running it as a paid service, while they could have done so, the RIAA chose to sue the world.

The p2p battle is just the beginning of what is going to happen all over the place in the coming years: UNDERGROUND IP.

GPL'd patents

What we need is people to allow their patented software to be used royalty-free in GPL'd software. This way, they would still get royalties from commercial vendors (which they should) without hurting open source. It seems like this would be a perfect candidate.

I have a new idea for a Patent

I am patenting a system for the moderation of online discussion boards using different models of messages and a scoring system that can allow users to browse only high-rated or sometimes-funny but nefariously modded down posts.

They will range like so:
Insightful
Funny
Offtopic
Troll
Informati ve
Flamebait

The scoring will range from a -2 though 5 basis, users may boost certain catagories of messages by as many points as they want, further allowing them to see what they want to see.

This system is free to use, but you must agree to the EULA

EULA:

Me ( Eric(b0mb)dennis ) hereby reserves the right to freely use any property you own, including, but not limited to:
Kitchen and/or pantry (I need to eat)
Toiletry (The bush just aint cutting it anymore)
Your personal computer(s) (My name is Juan and I am posting this message from a chicken coupe in The Country formally known as Iraq, i am using RFC 1149 in conjunction with a new form of animal telepathy to post this message -=patent pending=-)

I also reserve the right to change the moderation of any post I see fit.. (This should be modded +5 Troll, if it's not done, expect some SCO action on your butt)

Thank you, and please be sure to invite me over for dinner... 50,000 Dinas isn't even buying me a zucchini anymore

...for the lazy

The patent [uspto.gov]

Re:...for the lazy

Oops.. that is, they filed in Sept. 1997, and I was using Squid before that.

Here's much of the early revision history [squid-cache.org] of Squid.

Version 1.0beta1 was April 19, 1996, and that was based on Harvest which was even earlier.

Write to your European Member of Parlemant NOW!

This is an Excellent example of why software patents are bad

Right now, if you are a European citizen, like I am, then Write to your European Member of Parliament (MEP), and tell them that you think software patents are a bad thing, and that they should vote against them on June 30th.

The forthcoming European vote was covered here on slashdot [slashdot.org] a few days ago, but did not make the front page, so did not get much coverage.

You can find a list of European Members of Parliament here [ark.ac.uk] To avoid annoying them, do write you your MEP, not to a party leader. If you have several, please take a look at which issues they cover, and chose the one that take an interest in trade/technology etc.

Remember, Write NOW! we don't want this sort of cr*p in

Getting out of hand

This is starting to get out of hand!
I dont live in US(god bless that nation), but I am afraid that these "IP properties" enforcements is going to far. I use the term "IP properties in general though I shouldn't, but you know what I mean. Will patents and court decision made in US affect me in europe? Will I have to move to some obscure island where no enforcment of US interests exist?

Mirror Image is not Akamai

Having worked with Mirror Image I have to say that the way Mirror Image is doing the caching differs strongly from Akamai's.

While Akamai is putting cache servers in many IP provider's locations (I think more than 5000 so far), Mirror Image is concentrating its caches in about 20 locations connected to the big exchange and peering points. The Mirror Image presenters were explicitely stressing this point and that this other approach is the key to Mirror Image's success. So I guess the patent covers the Mirror Image Way Of Doing Things rather than the idea to cache websites to speed up transfer rates.

Re:Mirror Image is not Akamai

That difference is absolutely negligible. Even if it's a difference in the fine points of the company strategy, it should NOT be sufficient for a patent. To me this is definitely another case of patent abuse.

Re:Mirror Image is not Akamai

So I guess this means that I probably don't have to worry about Mirror Image filing suit if I were to (only hypothetically, of course, ;-) ) run a Squid+IPTables transparent proxy at home.

Who's going to patent adding SquidGuard to that mix?

Programmed suit job

Can you say 'patent infringement suit'?

Yeah, I bet Akamai even installed a vixie-cron job to launch the suit automatically in the next few days.

The EFF should patent stuff

If we want to fight this patent battle the solution is not to sit back, wait until a patent comees out, then bitch about it. We need to be pro-active.

The EFF and/or the FSF should be actively going out and patenting every software idea that comes out of free software under the sun. They could then just release the patents with some kind of liberal license, with a revocation clause.

This would give you two things... it would supposedly prevent other companies from patenting the same thing, and it would also give us a portfolio a-la IBM to use as defense... as in if these guys try to sue squid, the EFF comes in and says "well we have a patent on using the color red on menus... so if you sue squid we will revoke your patent license and sue you!" Stupid example but you get the idea.

Re:The EFF should patent stuff

There is no need for EFF/FSF to patent stuff.

Instead, EVERYONE should be writing 'Free' patents on every idea under the sun and publishing them far and wide. Once it is published, it's prior art. Surely 100,000 geeks can match a bunch of lawyers? We have the advantage that we don't have to pay for 'free patents' and there is no red tape.

Maybe EFF/FSF's contribution can be to set up a wiki which can be used to make a permanant, easily searchable, record of all these ideas?

I guess such a scheme addresses the 'prevention aspect' but doesn't address the 'bargaining' aspect.

If a patent is only gong to be used as a bargaining chip, it probably doesn't have to be particlarly strong, so it might be possible to D.I.Y. and eliminate legal fees. That way, it might be affordable to patent some of the 'better' ideas.

Re:The EFF should patent stuff

The EFF and/or the FSF should be actively going out and patenting every software idea that comes out of free software under the sun

This is completely pointless. Simply by making the software available, you can claim prior art, which invalidates any patents filed later by third parties on the same technology. Similarly, if the software source has been made public, it can't be patented anyway by anyone.

We need more than that

By documenting prior art, you can invalidate any patents filed later by third parties on the same technology.

By filing a defensive patent, you can negotiate against any patents filed later by third parties on different but still obvious (*cough* - 1-click anything - *cough*) technology.

Since the patent office seems to currently approve patents on "doing something people have done for centuries... but with a computer!" this may be necessary.

Of course, I'd want to see in writing something which grants open source software a perpetual license to use such patents, as opposed to say Red Hat's "we promise not to enforce our patents against free software unless someone buys us out or we change our minds" promise.

These guys are still around?

I worked for MII a few years ago (the company I worked for was bought out by them) and everything I saw indicated they were on their way to destruction and should make their time.

The Vik brothers have been using MII as part of a shell game for years - I wonder when they got the bright idea to try and make money with it?

Vixie

I commented before about not trusting Vixie very much due to some of the things he has done in recent years, and he proves me right.

Makes MAPS a pay service after orbs (their biggest competitor at the time) closes up shop.

Creates the "members-only" only bind list which deals with bind related security problems.
(http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/ 02/03/16562 43&mode=nested&tid=95)

I don't know if maybe he is pissed off since he isn't thought of as a god or what, but turning internet community related items into pay services isn't a way to become the net got.

This is not "Tranparent Web Caching"

The generally accepted term for this type of technology is "Content Distribution Networking" or "Content Delivery Networking". Akamai [akamai.net], Speedera [speedera.com], Digital Island [digitalisland.net] etc. are Content Distribution companies which will (according to the necessary commercial agreements), take a customer's content and distribute it around their overlay CDNs. Generally speaking, these CDNs overlay the traditional Internet using co-located space in customer or exchange point datacentres. There are, however, some CDN organisations who take the approach of building their own infrastructure.

"Transparent Web Caching" on the other hand is generally a term applied to the transparent redirection of TCP port 80 IP traffic on access equipment through a set of HTTP proxy devices. This technique is used by many ISPs to force users to use their Webcaches even if the user thinks they are being clever by disabling the pre-defined HTTP Proxy settings in their Web browser.

Until recently, you could build your own CDN ($$$) using software from people such as Inktomi [inktomi.com], but can still use devices from other manufacturers such as Network Appliance or Cisco Systems [cisco.com].

Filed in 1996?

From the article: "Mirror Image developed the transparent Web caching patent in 1996"

From Mirror Images "About Us"
1997: Mirror Image Internet Inc. is founded.

The earliest date on the Patent itself is September 30, 1997.

IIRC Squid also was around in '97.

The exact dates will be interesting.

Re:Filed in 1996?

This is a quirk in US patent law. Prior art needs to exist a year before for the filing date to invalidate a patent provided the patentholder can provide evidence that they developed the technology before then.

By contrast, non-US patents can be invalidated by any art prior to the filing date.

I think AOL might have been first

They might want to watch out, because from what I understand AOL has the world's largest internet cache system (all running Linux, actually). And I'd bet that it's been in place since before 1996.

Doesn't work that way.

It isn't country A suing country B. Those are companies doing the suing. The companies make donations to politicians who will pass laws allowing them to sue. The amount of the donation (the price of the country's people/sheep) is small enough compared to the value of what they take (lamb chops), that the investment makes sense.

This is all addressed in Zechariah 11 of the Bible (apt-get --install bible; bible; Zec 11;;;;). It isn't a US-only thing. It isn't a today-only thing. It's shepherds eating their sheep, and selling their sheep to each other to eat. But the problem, as outlined in Zec 11, is that the sheep get the shepherd they deserve.

Sorry, them's the breaks.

Wrong attitude

'We anticipate that these patents and our technology solutions will encourage large groups of corporations to become customers of Mirror Image services'

It's the technology that should be getting the customers, not the patents, it's this kind of attitude (we're using patents to encourage customers - read FUD) that leads to forgetting why patents are there, to allow you to enjoy the benefit of the attractiveness of your INVENTION, not the attractiveness of your patent

15 minute Patent Summary & Analysis

The patent is at Delphion [delphion.com] (free registration required) and the USPTO [uspto.gov]. Paul Vixie is listed as an inventor but probably has no ownership rights, or even the ability to collect on royalties. So don't lynch him yet...

The first base (or independent) claim is:

1. A method for transferring information via the Internet, comprising the steps of:
   • intercepting a message from an Internet user directed to a content provider address;
   • determining whether or not the message is an information request;
   • sending the message to the Internet without being affected if the message is not an information request;
   • determining whether or not said information request relates to a content provider address having a corresponding alternative address, said alternative address providing at least part of the information provided at said content provider address; and
   • directing said information request to said corresponding alternative address, if existing, or sending said information request to the Internet without being affected, if not.

Doesn't sound much like my understanding of how Akamai works (I didn't think Akamai "intercepted" requests -- the origin servers actually pointed to the cache servers in their img src tags). It does sound an awful lot like a transparent proxy however.

There's 36 claims, but only 3 are independent -- the rest are derived from those 3 (dependent claims). It's only the claims that are worth reading and worth worrying about. Press releases, abstracts and summaries are all irrelevant to what a patent actually covers. I find them more confusing than useful.

Let's concentrate on the 3 independent claims then. Here's the other 2:

• 15. A system for transferring information via the Internet, comprising:

  • first means for intercepting a message from an Internet user directed to a content provider address;
  • second means for determining whether or not the message is an information request;
  • third means for sending the message to the Internet without being affected if the message is not an information request;
  • fourth means for determining whether or not said information request relates to a content provider address having a corresponding alternative address, said alternative address providing at least part of the information provided at said content provider address; and
  • fifth means for directing said information request to said corresponding alternative address, if such a corresponding alternative address exists, or sending said information request to the Internet without being affected, if not.

• 36. A method for efficiently delivering cached information to Internet users, comprising the steps of:

  • intercepting a message from an Internet user directed to a content provider, the message requesting specific information;
  • determining whether or not the message relates to a content provider address having a corresponding alternative address, the corresponding alternative address providing at least part of the information provided at the content provider address;
  • determining whether or not the specific information is within the at least part of the information provided at the corresponding alternative address; and
  • providing the at least part of the information to the Internet user, if the specific information is within the at least part of the information, or sending the message to the Internet, if not.

As you can see, the differences between these claims are very subtle. I'd need to spend more time reading those claims to understand

Prior art on their other patents

The press release also mentions patent no.s 5,991,809, 6,370,580 and 6,480,893.

It turns out the last two deal with offloading requests for static content to a separate webserver. Well, isn't that a common use for mod_rewrite? It certainly existed back then, this is the earliest page [archive.org] I can find where it became an 'official' part of apache (I am sure theres more in the cvs logs) - thats from Jan 97, version *3* of mod_rewrite. The patents weren't filed until 5 months later.

Before it was an official apache module, mod_rewrite was released in 1996 [google.com] and there is evidence of people using it for offloading requests from one server to another that same year [google.com].

-Baz

Akamai is not a transparent cache

I'm not sure what the poster meant by "sounds like what Akamai do", but Akamai is far from a "transparent cache proxy". Anyone who has used Akamai for more than 2 minutes would realize this. The only things Akamai might do that could be somehow linked to the patent is that Akamai is a cache that distributes data regionally. It's not transparent and it's not terribly easy to use for the we developer, either.

Kris

Mirror Image's original caching service vs. CDN

It looks to me like Mirror Image's original "transparent supercache" system is what's described in this newest patent (not so much their Content Delivery Network). The patent looks like its fairly broadly worded, and probably covers some similar models too, but on the other hand, they cite plenty of prior art in their own patent. So overall I would guess that "ordinary" transparent caching is not covered by this patent, but then again IANAL, and in particular IANAPA.

Mirror Image's original business plan was to provide a client-side supercache service to client-side ISPs in places where upstream bandwidth was scarce/expensive (ie, Europe in the 90s). MII would 'mirror' popular high traffic (American) content onto supercaches located just a few hops from the ISPs. ISPs subscribing to the MII service could then configure their proxies to do a "look aside" and access popular content from the local MII supercache rather than have to sent requests across the ocean and pull the content all the way back. It worked nicely for ISPs that needed it, but there were fewer and fewer client-side ISPs willing to pay for access to the MII supercaches. So MII expanded into the server-side part of the caching business: "Content Delivery Networks".

In 2001, MII bought an existing CDN technology company (Clearway Technologies) and in the process acquired a nifty server-side software agent (your choice of Apache module or IIS plug-in) that automatically "Mirrorizes" *coughcoughlikeAkamizescough* all of the output from an origin Web server, so getting your server's content onto the MII CDN only takes a couple of minutes and you don't have to alter any of your Web content. That agent and its associated methods are covered by the other patents mentioned in MII's press release.

Personally, I believe that if MII wanted to sue Akamai for patent infringement, they probably could make a case for it these days, but --as always-- it's unclear that that would be the best use of their resources.

-Mark Kriegsman
Former Chief Scientist, Mirror Image Internet;
Founder, Clearway Technologies;
Inventor, US Patents 5,991,809, 6,370,580 and 6,480,893 (now assigned to MII)

From the SCO school of business ethics

First he takes over maintenance of BIND, then proceeds to blackmail his "customers" into paying him to be told about the copious amount of security problems, essentially capitalizing on the work of others.

Then he had BIND 9 written, which has nothing to do with BIND. We call it BIND then? Again, to capitalize on the work of others (not that the BIND name is something to carry proudly).

Now he patents what Linux could do at least since 2.0 (1996) with a patched squid 1 (been there, done that). Granted, his patent appears to be earlier than Akamai (1998) but Digital Island may have been early enough to invalidate the patent. They were bought by Cable and Wireless a while ago.

Just my 2 cents as a Patent Attorney

I just read claim 1 in this patent (traditionally, claim 1 is the broadest claim in the patent) and my first thought was that this patent has to have a heck of a prosecution history with a lot of comments that will narrow the interpretation of this claim in order for this to have been allowed. Then again, the filing date is 1999 and I don't know how much caching was being done then.

Bottom line: SOMEONE had to invent caching. It very well could have been these guys. But if they approached one of my clients with an offer to license this thing, I would want to do a LOT of investigation before advising one way or the other.

The nub of the problem

as it appears to me is the patenting of business processes as a series of 'desirable outcomes'.

Their patent claims read like a first-pass analysis of the caching-load balancing problem.

To my mind, this sort of thing should not be patentable - it is merely a problem analysis, not an innovative solution.

Most competent people who understood networks and the issues behind content provision would have come up with a similar, if not identical solution.

This could have been failed on the 'non-obvious' requirement, but hasn't been.

It seems that the technical abilities of the patenting authorities are not of a level to deal with patent applications such as this one competently (or indeed in a timely fashion, if it was filed in 1996).

The best solution for everyone (except greedy patent factories such as this example) is to outlaw the patenting of software and software designs. There's plenty of copyright law out there to protect the code you write, and if it's not the best code at the most appropriate price, then you'll fail in the market and too bad.

If on the other hand you have a true innovation in your field, you'll have a good 12 months to build the initial market before the competition comes to play.

If America really is true to the principles of the Founders, it's time that the politicians looked at this issue and came up with a solution to stamp on parasitical patents such as this. Even if unsuccessful in their aims of extracting money, the costs to others in the field of dealing with the attentions of these people is a disruption to trade, and needs to be eliminated.

Evidence of transparent caching from August 1996

This [squid-cache.org] is the earliest reference to transparent caching that I could find in the squid-users archive.

Re:Frist Ninnle Pist!

I'm sorry, but our comnpany has patented First Posts. Our lawyers will be in touch shortly.

Oh, I see you have a different implementation (first Pists), but that means diddly squat nowadays doesn't it, bwah-ha-ha.