Les brevets sur les logiciels et leur danger pour le shareware

Europe Shareware software patents newsletter #6
9 September 2003

Webpage: 

Archive: 


CONTENTS:

1. UK patent on information management

2. Inventors patent ideas to pre-empt their rivals

3. Two articles from the Guardian

4. Symantec patent on file synchronization

5. French official criticizes software patents

6. Patent on wireless network in schools

7. Web caching patented



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1. UK patent on information management

English article (Out-Law):

http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?
page_id=softwarepatentgran1054295227&area=news

German article (Heise.de):
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/hos-12.06.03-000/


British software company Kalido Ltd, a spin-out from oil giant Shell, has
been granted a UK patent for its software design, which provides
integrated views of information from disparate data systems during
business change for performance management.


Source :
http://www.kalido.com/news/newsCentre/view.asp?newsID=135

The patent covers a number of unique aspects of the core technology
used in the company's award-winning KALIDOTM Dynamic Information
Warehouse software. Unlike traditional approaches, the software is
modelled to embrace change and assumes a constantly changing and diverse
business environment. The technology behind the software describes an
unparalleled method for storing data within a time-variant framework so
that it can be easily interrogated and rapidly amended in reaction to
changes in a business.



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2. Inventors patent ideas to pre-empt their rivals

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/06/09/BU213833.DTL

The San Francisco Gate ran an article about the growing strategy of
offensive blocking patents.

This kind of hold-up strategy is particularly used by some dishonnest
lawyers who file a patent without any intention of producing an
innovative but to sue other companies developing real goods.



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3. Two articles from the Guardian

FYI, two articles in "The Guardian" relates to the issue of software
patents:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4688611,00.html
by Arlene McCarthy, the directive rapporteur for the European Parliament
who defends her position in favour of software patents.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4683640,00.html
by Richard Stallman and Nick Hill who explain why A. McCarthy's text puts
no clear limit to patentability and contains many flaws that should and
could be fixed.



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4. Symantec patent on file synchronization

Patent: US303958

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/psz-14.06.03-001/

Symantec was granted a patent on file synchronization. The patent is
about updating only modified files on clients with the help of a server
containing a signature list. 

But some critics say that the "rsync" Unix tool from Andrew Tridgell 
offers the same functionnality since 7 years


A few quotes:

  « Kritiker weisen darauf hin, dass das "rsync"-Tool 
    des Samba-Entwicklers Andrew Tridgell unter Unix/ 
    Linux schon seit über sieben Jahren Vergleichbares 
    leistet - auch dieses kann eine Aktualisierung auf 
    die veränderten Bereiche von Dateien beschränken. 
    Gegner von Patentschutz für softwaregestützte 
    Erfindungen führen US-Patente wie dieses an, um auf 
    die Gefahr von "Sperrpatenten" für eigentlich 
    alltägliche softwaregestützte Vorgänge hinzuweisen, 
    die sie bei einer Liberalisierung des europäischen 
    Patentrechts auch hierzulande befürchten.

    Symantec hat im vergangenen Jahr bereits durch ein 
    umstrittenes Patent auf Heuristik-Verfahren von 
    sich reden gemacht. »



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5. French official criticizes software patents

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/030616/108/39bau.html

Yahoo! France has a short video interview with Jean-Michel Yolin,
president of the innovation section of the Ministry of Economy.

J.M. Yolin states that the patent philisophy has been corrupted and is
now mainly an agressive tool against competition from innovators.

A few quotes:

  « Le brevet servait à rentabiliser les efforts 
    de recherche-développement. Au lieu de servir 
    l'innovation, il a été détourné pour miner le 
    terrain et neutraliser les innovateurs gênants, 
    en leur envoyant des avocats dans les pattes 
    au moment d'une levée de fonds ou quand ils 
    essaient de trouver des clients. » 



----
6. Patent on wireless network in schools

Patent: EP0664061 

Frontline Technology was granted a patent on the use of wireless
networking in schools to update data about students (filed 1992, granted
1999).

The patent is now being challenged by the Treasury Solicitor (the
official lawyers for the UK government), 

    http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/management/tools/ims/patent/


Claim 1:

http://l2.espacenet.com/espacenet/bn
sviewer?CY=ep&LG=en&DB=EPD&PN=EP0664061&ID=EP+++0664061B1+I+

  « A student data collection system comprising a 
    central computer (12) including a data 
    collation program and wireless transceiver 
    means (14), and a plurality of portable data 
    collection units (2) for use by teachers/
    supervisors, each of which also includes 
    wireless transceiver means (10) for 
    communication with the central computer; 
    characterised in that the central computer 
    includes means for downloading respective 
    sets of student data to each of the portable 
    units, and in that each portable unit (2) 
    includes manual data input means (8) and a 
    data logging program so that the user can 
    enter student attendance and/or other data to
    produce an output for uploading to the central 
    computer which is a combination of the 
    downloaded data and the manual input by the 
    user. »


The Frontline front page has a couple of (rather carefully selected?)
quotes from UK government ministers, apparently supporting the company.

http://www.frontline-technology.com/

http://www.frontline-technology.com/explained.html



----
7. Web caching patented

Patent: US6581090

Press release:
http://www.mirror-image.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?news_item_id=436

BIND author and all-around Internet personality Paul Vixie and Mirror
Image Internet have recently received US patent 6,581,090, specifically a
"technology that efficiently stores and retrieves content requests and
balances Web traffic between origin servers to improve performance and
speed". 

It seems that Akamai does exactly the same job since a few years.


A few quotes from the press release:

  « 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 we'll be attempting to work 
    cooperatively with our competitors and their 
    customers to address this issue.' »

In other words Mirror Image is willing to enforce its patent.

 

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