Microsoft, Yahoo, others sued by Softvault over DRM (Inquirer) [LWN.net]

Here's an Inquirer article on a company called SoftVault, which is suing a long list of companies for infringement of its DRM patents. If we weren't so opposed to software patents, we might be tempted to see this as a sort of poetic justice.

A look at SoftVault's web site is also instructive: "Access to software programs or digital content, or to a device, is enabled by periodic authorization messages, akin to a 'heartbeat,' exchanged between the server and client agents. As long as these periodic authorization messages continue to be exchanged, access is enabled. If for any reason the authorization messages are terminated, access is disabled. In the case of software or digital content, disabling may involve encrypting or deleting files. In the case of a device, the disabling logic would essentially turn the device into a 'brick' that is unusable and therefore has no practical resale value."

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Microsoft, Yahoo, others sued by Softvault over DRM (Inquirer)

Posted Jan 16, 2006 17:23 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

I don't know how they got these patents. The widely used flexlm license manager (formerly owned by Globetrotter, since bought by Macrovision) works exactly as described in claim 1 of the older of the two patents: the client application communicates with the license server by means of a "heartbeat"; if the heartbeat signal is not received by the client on a regular basis, access to the licensed software is suspended.

So Macrovision is an infringer, or rather, would be if weren't for the fact that flexlm is much older than the patent's filing date.

Microsoft, Yahoo, others sued by Softvault over DRM (Inquirer)

Posted Jan 20, 2006 4:06 UTC (Fri) by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385) [Link]

FlexLM-based implementations generally don't encrypt (except in cases where the files are encrypted in the first place, and the system simply fails to decrypt them) or delete (except in cases where data in core is lost when the application crashes, and cases where the application is so intrinsically buggy that it loses your data whether there are heartbeats or not) files when the heartbeat fails, in my experience.

Maybe that's just different enough for a patent. ;-)

Microsoft, Yahoo, others sued by Softvault over DRM (Inquirer)

Posted Jan 16, 2006 17:35 UTC (Mon) by Richard_J_Neill (subscriber, #23093) [Link]

Is it, in fact, worth trying to use this as a counter-attack? i.e. the community should try to obtain patents on all sorts of DRM, in order to render it unusable?

Microsoft, Yahoo, others sued by Softvault over DRM (Inquirer)

Posted Jan 16, 2006 17:40 UTC (Mon) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link]

In fact I remember someone did take out a DRM patent which they though Microsoft would have been interested in for their trusted computing initiative. I don't recall what happened but most likely Microsoft just found a way to work around it.

If patents weren't so expensive it might actually work.

Microsoft, Yahoo, others sued by Softvault over DRM (Inquirer)

Posted Jan 26, 2006 22:55 UTC (Thu) by rabnud (guest, #2839) [Link]

-yawn-

So this consumers involuntary license fees would go to a different company than in the first case - big deal. Too bad people simply have neither morals nor ethics, if they had such, DRM would be moot because people would not STEAL. Do your part - teach respect of rights and responsibility to your kids.