Chrome's Sandbox Feature Infringes On Three Patents So Google Must Now Pay $20 Million (bleepingcomputer.com) 104
An anonymous reader writes: After five years of litigation at various levels of the U.S. legal system, today, following the conclusion of a jury trial, Google was ordered to pay $20 million to two developers after a jury ruled that Google had infringed on three patents when it designed Chrome's sandboxing feature. Litigation had been going on since 2012, with Google winning the original verdict, but then losing the appeal. After the Supreme Court refused to listen to Google's petition, they sent the case back for a retrial in the U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas, the home of all patent trolls. As expected, Google lost the case and must now pay $20 million in damages, in the form of rolling royalties, which means the company stands to pay more money as Chrome becomes more popular in the future.
Troll's Get Them! (Score:2)
Troll's Get Them!
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I wish I had the patent on the greengrocers' apostrophe.
Abolish Software Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
This is another shining example of why software patents need to be abolished.
Which of the 3 do you have an issue with and why? (Score:3, Insightful)
"This is a shining example", you said. Which of the three patents is a shining example and why? What issue do you see in whichever patent you're talking about?
Re:Which of the 3 do you have an issue with and wh (Score:5, Informative)
I couldn't find the patent numbers being spoken of here, at least in the first hundred pages of Googles 350+ page brief, and the article itself is pretty useless when it comes to details.
But to answer your question in general, software patents break the entire purpose and intent of the patent system as a whole. That's what makes nearly all of them worthless and impossible.
Patents are intended to describe an implementation of something, previously an implementation of a machine or process.
If one chooses not to design their own machine, they can look for a patent describing a machine that does what they want and license it. At that point you are allowed to build the machine as described in detail in the patent and typically sell it.
That's the entire purpose of licensing a patent in the first place, to save you the time of designing something to perform that function when that work has already been done by someone else.
Software patents however have no such requirement, and thus almost never actually describe any form of working machine or process or anything.
If I want a machine to package my widgets automatically, I could find a patent on a machine to package my particular widget, license it, and use the description of that machine to build a widget packager. If the cost of the patent license is cheaper than doing my own R&D, it's still a win.
But if I want a program to customize my widgets, despite being patents that describe "a process to customize a widget", there is generally no description of any form of software that would do that.
So no matter how much cheaper it would be to license said patent than do my own R&D and programming, actually licensing the patent does not benefit me in any way shape or form since it does not provide any form of software or a design of software that would accomplish that.
Instead the trolls get a patent on the concept and idea of customizing widgets, and then use that to sue me when I do my own R&D and programming work to write a widget customizing program all on my own without their assistance.
That aids no one but the patent trolls, and that aid comes to them for exactly zero effort or work that benefits literally no one.
That is why software patents are wrong and should not exist.
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Well, you don't need to wholly ban software patents.
Just make it a requirement for them to be valid, that the patent application contain enough detail to fully build the machine being described, from scratch, without infringing other patents or doing significant work other than what's described specifically in the patent application.
Make the wording of the law such that no software patent can really be patentable without working code, and you're done. Bye bye trolls.
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Do you create software? Have you read a software patent?
Anyone who has done both will know that software patents, as the grandparent post said, are completely worthless to someone creating a working implementation of software which would be covered under the patent. Software patents describe a concept. They do not provide the details of a working implementation (because there is no working implementation) that would allow one to re-create the software.
A few very general, some very specific (publicity) (Score:5, Interesting)
I've read a lot of patents, and written a lot of software (I've spent far more time programming though).
I've read some *extremely* specific "software patents"*, and some very general ones. The company I work for has a patent so specific that it would be hard to infringe it. If you tried, you'dv probably accidentally do something slightly differently, so your implementation wouldn't be covered by our patent.
There are about 40 MILLION commercial airplane flights each year. Of those 40 million, about 2 have fatal crashes. So 39,999,998 safe flights, 2 crashes. We all know which flights end up all over the news.
Patents are similar. Bad ones end up on the news, often being the subject of extensive litigation. If someone didn't know anything about commercial aviation, they'd never been on a plane or at at airport, just watching the news they might reasonably be very afraid of flying. Every flight they've ever heard about crashed. If you know something about aviation, you know that's not even a million-to-one chance, it's a twenty-million-to-one chance. If you've never had reason to read patents, and never been in any kind of court trial, you might reasonably think most of them are like the ones you hear about in the news.
There ARE some patents that are overly broad, which sucks. There are some plane flights that crash, which also sucks.
Actually even the patents you hear about in the news are frequently *not* actually like what you hear in the news, especially on Slashdot - patent law is a big clickbait item on Slashdot. Most of us know that half the tech-related headlines and summaries we see on Slashdot are basically BS. The same is true of patents.
Some company will apply for a patent related to new type of fire extinguisher for cars that uses a new compound they've developed, which requires a new kind of valve they've invented to handle it. They've *applied for* a patent to cover "toroidal double monkey valve inverted for use in automotive fire extinguishers using dry dimethyl carbonate extinguishing agent". The Slashdot headline will most assuredly be "Company Patents Fire Extinguishers". The summary will mention fire extinguishers in cars, but won't mention the newly invented valve which is the thing they are actually trying to patent. Slashdot commenters go wild posting about "prior art - Nascar". You can't really blame them, the summary didn't even mention the patent is for a special valve the company invented, to use with a brand new type of extingushing agent. Commenters react to the headline, not having any way to know it's BS unless they take time to research it.
* There's no such thing as a "software patent", but that's a topic for another day.
My apologies to chemists re dimethyl carbonate (Score:2)
Ps, my apologies to the chemists here, who know that dimethyl carbonate would *not* actually be a very good extinguishing agent. I wasn't going to *actually* invent a brand-new extinguishing agent just to make my post, so I named a random chemical that most people aren't familar with.
Re:No true Scotsman (Score:1)
No true leprechaun (Score:2)
There's no such thing as a leprechaun.
There's no such thing as a unicorn.
There's no such thing as a gaseous solid.
There's no such thing as a dollarback.
There's no such thing as a purple patent.
There's no such thing as a software patent.
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Second, pretty much NONE of software patents are useful. Most of them are filed for defensive purposes or to show "value" for investors and are never asserted or licensed. During the recent years 20 years or so the cost of patent litigation exceeded the licensing revenue for software patents ( https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com] ).
Third, there ARE useful patents. Pr
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From google's reply:
This case concerns three patents that seek to protect computers "from malicious software", or malware. According to the patent's common specification, malware programs often succeded in infecting computers because the computers' "resources" were "shared by programs simultaneously, giving a malware program a conduit to access and corrupt other programs.". [...] The proposed solution was to eliminate that conduit by separating the computer's memory into distinct areas, such that a malicious program could not access or infect other programs. [...]
Because that simple concept had long been known, respondents secured allowance of their claims only by limiting their scope. Among other things, the patent claims were limited to segregating components of a computer's hardware (as opposed to software). The computer's key system files would operate on a processor with access to one memory region, while any network-interface software would operate on a second processor with access only to a second memory region. Those claims issued as US patent No 7,484,247. [...]
After failing to license or sell that patented invention, [...] respondents surrendered the original patent in 2010 and filed reissue applications with different claims. [...]
Armed with publicly available information about Google's Chrome web browser [...], the applicants drafted claims geared toward browsers. Instead of separating hardware components, the proposed claims used discrete software processes. The computer would execute trusted processes in the main memory area, while "isolating" potentially dangerous processes "from the main computer system" in a second area. The proposed claims referred to the trusted process and the potentially dangerous process as the first and second "browser process[es]". [...]
The examiner rejected the claims because they were not new.
Then it continues that some earlier patent "Narin" already had such a concept, and apparently the patent got issued anyway because it was limited to "web browser process" and not "browsing program", as that earlier patent.
Whether to abolish software patents or not (I think they should), this is clearly an abuse of the system.
Its also shocking that simple obvious ideas like the concept to confine processes into a sandbox for security purposes can be patented when you just make your claims
Thanks for the research into Google's side of the (Score:2)
Thanks for the research. Much appreciated.
> From google's reply: ...
> Its also shocking
Don't be too shocked that according to Google's lawyers, Google is right. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but what's quoted is Google's argument. The other side may very well reply "Wtf? Did you forget to read the entire first half of the patent?" :)
Most of the time when a patent story shows up on Slashdot I read the patent to see what it actually claims. I haven't done the research on these. So I'm taking no
Re: What part of valid did you not understand (Score:1)
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You would think that all the major tech companies would take a small percentage of the billions$$ they make every year to do some serious lobbying for sane patent laws. But that never happens, no matter how many times these companies get hit by patent trolls.
Instead, patents, especially software patents, are treated like nuclear weapons. Publicly, everyone says they are bad and should be eliminated, but privately, nobody really wants to get rid of them because there's always a chance that some day you mig
The novelty requirement (Score:3)
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I couldn't find the patent numbers being spoken of here, at least in the first hundred pages of Googles 350+ page brief, and the article itself is pretty useless when it comes to details.
But to answer your question in general, software patents break the entire purpose and intent of the patent system as a whole. That's what makes nearly all of them worthless and impossible.
Patents are intended to describe an implementation of something, previously an implementation of a machine or process.
If one chooses not to design their own machine, they can look for a patent describing a machine that does what they want and license it. At that point you are allowed to build the machine as described in detail in the patent and typically sell it.
That's the entire purpose of licensing a patent in the first place, to save you the time of designing something to perform that function when that work has already been done by someone else.
Software patents however have no such requirement, and thus almost never actually describe any form of working machine or process or anything.
If I want a machine to package my widgets automatically, I could find a patent on a machine to package my particular widget, license it, and use the description of that machine to build a widget packager. If the cost of the patent license is cheaper than doing my own R&D, it's still a win.
But if I want a program to customize my widgets, despite being patents that describe "a process to customize a widget", there is generally no description of any form of software that would do that.
So no matter how much cheaper it would be to license said patent than do my own R&D and programming, actually licensing the patent does not benefit me in any way shape or form since it does not provide any form of software or a design of software that would accomplish that.
Instead the trolls get a patent on the concept and idea of customizing widgets, and then use that to sue me when I do my own R&D and programming work to write a widget customizing program all on my own without their assistance.
That aids no one but the patent trolls, and that aid comes to them for exactly zero effort or work that benefits literally no one.
That is why software patents are wrong and should not exist.
Best to setup a software company in Nigeria, Libia, or anywhere where software patents are illegal. That is what is happening to the American Software Industry. (India, Malaysia and middle east, here we come).
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This really is an example of why the patent system in the US is completely broken.
The patent authors amended the patents years after Google Chrome implemented sandboxing in order to specifically make the patents apply more specifically to Chrome.
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Which of the three patents is a shining example and why?
ALL of them.
1) They are all overly broad.
2) They all describe a mathematical process which is not patentable.
3) They are all obvious.
Unless you read them (Score:2)
The people who actually read the patents, multiple juries, disagree with your claims of fact, 1, 3, and 4. If you'd care to point to even one *possible* instance of prior art, an interesting discussion might be possible. If you just keep saying random stuff, with absolutely no idea what the patents even cover - well that's just boring. We'd be watching Trump if we wanted to hear someone say random stuff from their ass. (Though he at least gets a five minute briefing first, most of the time.)
On 2 (math),
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I got called away before I was finished, so I posted prematurely.
4) They all have invalidating prior art, which the patent office and the patent court uniformly ignore.
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Alice.
Chew on this:
https://www.techdirt.com/artic... [techdirt.com]
Alice applies to *just* adding "with a computer" (Score:2)
Here's what the court ruled in Alice:
--
mere recitation of a generic computer cannot transform a *patent-ineligible* idea into a patent-eligible invention
--
In other words, if you have something that's not patentable in the first place, adding the words "with a computer" doesn't magically make it patentable. It's either patentable or not, saying "with a computer" doesn't change that, the court ruled.
By the same reasoning, if you start with something that *is* patentable, having a computer involved doesn't ma
Re: (Score:1)
Interesting idea. Unfortunately, ideas cannot be patented. Which was more or less the whole basis for the opinion of that judge (that, in general, software patents are not valid patents).
Your argument would seem, then, merely to show that saying that an idea can be implemented in hardware also doesn't make it patentable.
I think what is confusing you here is that any specific implementation of your idea in hardware might be patentable (assuming your idea has been implemented in an original, innovative fashio
Re: Which of the 3 do you have an issue with and w (Score:1)
Patents in general. Medical too. Yes. Really.
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https://xkcd.com/435/ [xkcd.com]
SSH (Score:2)
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This is also an example of why Texas needs to be abolished.
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all software boils down to mathematics... why the heck is it ever possible to patent it in the first place...
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[On a computer]-style patent (Score:2)
The fundamentals behind sandboxing and hardware virtualisation date back from the time of big iron mainframes.
The only novel thing is that this is applied to a personal computer/workstation (to a newer type of hardware that didn't exist back then, but is basically just smaller).
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Re: Software should have copyright - and nothing m (Score:2)
Software parents are akin to copyrighting e.g. stories using certain plot devices. Imagine if one author patented revealing the killer at the start, another revealing him at the end, another patenting revealing the doer-of-crime two thirds of the way in. Certainly abolishing software patents would not inhibit progress in software development, and without them more progress would be made.
Anxiously awaiting opinions (Score:4, Funny)
I'm now anxiously awaiting expert legal opinions by people who didn't even read the article, much less the patent.
Re:Anxiously awaiting opinions (Score:5, Funny)
My expert and legal opinion is that vanilla is better than chocolate except if you like strawberries, Mac is better than Windows except for games but Linux is better but only for servers, vi is better then emacs except Notepad is easier to use, Canada is better than the USA but still France and Japan are much cooler, Playstation is better than Xbox but Nintendo is more fun, blue is better than red yet ultraviolet is stronger.
FIGHT!
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I'll have you know that it gets really hot during our 17 days of summer.
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Lots of excuses for incompetence (Score:2)
Maybe the billion dollar corporation should have worked something out before violating the patents. It would have probably saved them a lot of grief.
Re: Lots of excuses for incompetence (Score:2)
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It is highly unlikely that the wording of the patent is relevant to the court case, as none of the jurors will know anything technical, or understand the arguments.
Personally, I want to know why the requirement for "a jury of your peers" does not require the jury to be litterate programmers in the language involved, and with knowledge of t
Is there a product these patents protect? (Score:2)
If not then the patents should be voided. Otherwise the patent system gets trolled into garbage disrepute.
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I'm now anxiously awaiting expert legal opinions by people who didn't even read the article, much less the patent.
My expert opinion as a software developer with an understanding of history is that the vast majority of these patents are shit and do nothing but enrich lawyers and parasite "inventors" while reducing competition and increasing the cost of doing business.
For a long time software was not patentable, and the industry boomed and innovated anyways. You know there are a flood of craptastic patents clogging up the system, and when you go to read one of these patents, it's full of arcane and obscure descriptions t
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Patents are the nuclear weapons of the software world. Everybody files for patents because they're scared s**tless that somebody else will get patents and then sue them, and they won't be able to retaliate. That's all well and good, tending to keep aggression in check, until some s**thole company/country with nothing to lose manages to get its hands on them. After that, it's game over for everybody.
The only sane answer is nonproliferation. Even if there used to be some strategic value in software paten
damages calculated? (Score:2)
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They may give it away for free, but they make a lot of money off of the search results that Chrome funnels their way. And, I would say the damages are from loss of revenue that would have occurred if Google had licensed the patent from them in the first place.
Regardless, whether the patent holder is using their patented idea or not has no bearing on the matter.
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Because damages are calculated using lost profits or at the very least a reasonable royalty for the use of the patent. Patents cover "making, using, or selling", so the patented invention doesn't have to be sold for there to be infringement and damages owed. Given the number of Chrome downloads, $20 million really isn't a lot of money. I'm not saying I agree that the patents in question should be held valid, just pointing o
U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas (Score:1)
How are these sandboxes different (Score:2)
substantially, as a patentable idea that is, than java applet sandboxes of 1995 vintage?
This kind of litigation would seem to rely on the profound, deep, deep technical ignorance of most in the legal profession.
That's one reason this kind of patent trolling is so despicable.
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substantially, as a patentable idea that is, than java applet sandboxes of 1995 vintage?
It is sandboxing a "web browser process", that is what the patent is for. Sandboxing ... a ... Web Browser (Process).
The process at the end is just added to make it sound more technical, and make lawyers and 80 year old judges think it is complicated tech stuff.
Wrong analogy (Score:3)
java applet sandboxing is (in theory) granted by the virtual environment provided by the JVM.
In theory, all the applet could be running in the same process.
chromium's sandboxing is hardware segragation provided by the CPU hardware itself (memory protection, and similar bread and butter of multi-processoring)
from the CPU 's perpesctive, each tab sandbox is an entirely different process.
and if you check the links of patent mentioned here around on this /. thread, this is exactly what is covered : using hardwa
Patents in question (Score:4, Informative)
Reissue serial numbers: USRE43500; USRE43528; and USRE43529. Searchable on google.
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BS Patents, basically User Space vs Kernel Space patents but "in a web browser". Both of the inventors had invented some real worthy patents, but the three in the suit are not worthy of a patent.
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BS Patents, basically User Space vs Kernel Space patents but "in a web browser". Both of the inventors had invented some real worthy patents, but the three in the suit are not worthy of a patent.
I haven't read the patents, but assuming it really is "User Space vs Kernel Space ... in a web browser", then maybe it is worth a patent. The patent was filed in 2004, when the user/kernel space dichotomy was just catching on in mainstream operating systems. This was well before applications had sandboxing to deal with security threats (actually, no one really dealt with security threats), and it was well before hardware virtualization became mainstream enough to run many virtual computers on the same machi
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Among other things for which you obviously know nothing.
Perhaps he works as a patent examiner?
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"Just catching on" in Mainstream Operating Systems in 2004?
How about Windows NT 3.1 (1993) and Linux (1991), those had distinct separate spaces using protected mode features.
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A lot longer ago than that. I started my kernel mode software development career in 1981, writing kernel code for RSX and VMS. The user/kernel space dichotomy had existed for many years before that! And the Mach microkernel was invented in about 1985.
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A lot longer ago than that. I started my kernel mode software development career in 1981, writing kernel code for RSX and VMS. The user/kernel space dichotomy had existed for many years before that! And the Mach microkernel was invented in about 1985.
Yes, it existed, but not for consumer OSes. None of the consumer grade windows OSes had it before Windows XP and Mac introduced it in OS X. So while the dichotomy existed, I'm not sure it existed in a consumer product like a web browser.
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Fuck innovation! (Score:2)
Lets pay the lawyers instead!
Nike Free Running 2016 Pas Cher (Score:1)
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Are you talking about the list that the Obama administration created or the deportation policies that Trump also carried over from Obama?
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How do you get away with this? She HATES it when I get any kitty litter in there.