Apple patents automatic software updates [LWN.net]

up2date prior art?

Posted Mar 23, 2006 16:27 UTC (Thu) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

Debian released APT in its stable version in March, 1999. IANAL, but I recall that unless the prior art predates the filing by at least one year, it may be insufficient to invalidate the patent.

I suspect APT was in testing for a long time, though, knowing Debian's release cycle. :-)

up2date prior art?

Posted Mar 23, 2006 16:44 UTC (Thu) by chel (guest, #11544) [Link]

Search on apt debian 1998 in google groups shows a number of hits, including a message in linux.debian.bugs.closed on Fri, 24 Apr 1998 12:07:43 +0200 (CEST) about a solved problem in "apt-get -f upgrade"

up2date yes, apt-get no

Posted Mar 23, 2006 16:58 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

up2date is prior art, apt is not. The reason is that Apple is patenting a daemon that runs in the background and alerts the user if updates are available. With apt-get, the user must invoke a command (or have a cron job do it). Honestly, though, I think that this whole class of patents should be disallowed under the "obvious to one skilled in the art" rule. The inventive step between what apt-get does and what up2date does is too small, especially when you consider apt-get invoked by a cron job.

up2date yes, apt-get no

Posted Mar 23, 2006 17:37 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]

One thing that jumped out at me when reading through the patent is that the covered mechanism for user notification is only triggered when the user accesses the information for which an upgrade is available, such as when a program is opened, i.e. "A new version of WizBangApp is available. Download update now?" The actual language is as follows:

"a notification component that automatically notifies said user, in response to subsequent access by the user of an item of computer information for which a notification flag has been set, of the availability of the upgrade for the accessed computer information and of any other upgrades indicated by any other notification flags set by said monitoring component"

In the case of Ubuntu at least, with its Update Manager, the user is notified at times not associated with the access of the affected information. I'm not sure if this would be enough to escape the scope of this patent, but the phrase does jump out more than once.

However, the patent does mention down at the bottom of the Description that "It will be appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art that the present invention can be embodied in other specific forms without departing from the spirit or essential characteristics thereof." In other words, they'll probably try to make it fit everything that pulls updates without specific requests from the user.

up2date yes, apt-get no

Posted Mar 23, 2006 18:49 UTC (Thu) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

the covered mechanism for user notification is only triggered when the user accesses the information for which an upgrade is available

I don't know how up2date works but it seems that the apt-get cronjob isn't covered by this. This patent seems to cover the issue when a web browser notifies the user (upon stumbling over a page containing a flash animation) that a new flash plugin is available.

Bye,NAR

Breadth, or exception?

Posted Mar 24, 2006 1:14 UTC (Fri) by kirkengaard (subscriber, #15022) [Link]

"It will be appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art that the present invention can be embodied in other specific forms without departing from the spirit or essential characteristics thereof."

I would read that more comfortably; patents cover the form, not the idea. "Practitioners will notice that you can implement this idea in other forms."

Or I'd *like* to, but for the "... without departing from the spirit or essential characteristics thereof." It's the "essential characteristics" language that hurts my brain. How much fudge factor is that when you say "Other forms possible", but say "... that will have the same characteristics." :(

up2date yes, apt-get no

Posted Mar 23, 2006 17:48 UTC (Thu) by chel (guest, #11544) [Link]

If putting a job in a crontab is worth a patent, "ls /usr/bin|wc " shows over 2000 possible patents ;-)

up2date yes, apt-get no

Posted Mar 23, 2006 20:38 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]

SSSSSSH! They'll hear you! And then where will we be? :-)

up2date prior art?

Posted Mar 23, 2006 16:55 UTC (Thu) by bastiaan (guest, #5170) [Link]

apt's changelog says that it's first release (0.0.1) was on "Tue, 31 Mar 1998 12:49:28 -0500", to be exact. See http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/a/apt/apt...

I don't know whether it was functional enough to serve as prior art, but by September 8th it had already matured to version 0.1.6. Judging by the Changelogs it appeared to be able to do FTP and HTTP at least...

up2date prior art?

Posted Mar 23, 2006 18:00 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

IANAL, but I recall that unless the prior art predates the filing by at least one year, it may be insufficient to invalidate the patent.

IANAL either, but I seem to remember that once you publish something you have like six months to patent it. But if somebody else publishes it before you (prior art by a third party) then you cannot patent it. Wikipedia has an explanation.

So it would depend on whether Apple engineers published their "invention" 6 months before the patent date, and before Red Hat published their equivalent "invention".

Cave people prior art?

Posted Mar 24, 2006 13:12 UTC (Fri) by jstAusr (guest, #27224) [Link]

Barbado: "Me go get water from stream now."
Marbodo: "See if fish in trap, while you are there, OK?"
Barbado: "OK."
Barbado as he goes down to stream thinks: "Me should patent idea, get water and fish in one trip to stream."