Barracuda turns to open source users for patent research (LinuxWorld) [LWN.net]

LinuxWorld takes a look at Barracuda Networks, and its patent concerns. "Barracuda Networks CEO Dean Drako says his company won't license a virus scanning patent from Trend Micro, and he's going to users to help build Barracuda's case file of prior art—previous software products and documentation that could help invalidate the patent in court. Barracuda is launching a new section of its web site, "Legal Defense of Free and Open Source Software", to document the patent case and the company's prior art research."

Barracuda turns to open source users for patent research (LinuxWorld)

Posted Jan 30, 2008 14:47 UTC (Wed) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link] (1 responses)

"prior art"

I don't get it in this case.

You can run more than one daemon on one server. Wow.

Look how novel this is! I can run daemon A in conjunction with daemon Q on this box! that
combo has never been run together before! No one else would have thought of itbut I did. Bow
down to my mighty inventive powers!

Please.

Or what am I missing?

all the best,

drew

"obviousness" in US patent law

Posted Jan 30, 2008 20:32 UTC (Wed) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

You're missing the state of "obviousness" in US patent law, prior to KSR v. Teleflex.  In that
case, the lower court held that even though there was prior art for an adjustable pedal, and
prior art for a pedal with a sensor placed in a certain way, the patent on the combination was
valid.  So you could have prior art for a virus scanner, and prior art for a mail proxy that
runs email through some kind of external scanning program, but the combination would be
non-obvious and patentable(!)

The story has some good comments from Eben Moglen on KSR v. Teleflex which could relate to the
"obviousness" of Trend Micro's patent, plus a quote and link to the Supreme Court opinion.