Apple being sued over online software updates

[MacUsers]

Microsoft and Apple are being sued because some guy claims he invented online software updates... I wonder how this will turn out...

http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2004/07/20/lawsuit/index.php?redirect=1090333167000

[thuh Freak]

they filed in 2000. i aint no lawyer, but it seems to me that the ftp has been around for a long time. i can setup an ftp server, which in a directory lists installer packages, and make some scripts on the client side to download from that ftp site and run the installer packages. if i read that patent dealie right, my ftp+script solution would be in violation. fuck me if no one thought of that 5 years ago. there has to be prior art. i'm inclined to think that nearly all distros of linux had something like this.

[Brad]

they filed in 2000... there has to be prior art. i'm inclined to think that nearly all distros of linux had something like this.

October 23, 1999. It was called Mac OS 9.

It had Software Update then, long before this patent was even filed.

BTC claims that Reisman's work dates back to the early 1990s, "well before the Internet became mainstream." Then why wasn't it patented back then before everyone else came up with the same idea? Sorry, guys. You snooze, you lose.

[thuh Freak]

October 23, 1999. It was called Mac OS 9.

It had Software Update then, long before this patent was even filed.

BTC claims that Reisman's work dates back to the early 1990s, "well before the Internet became mainstream." Then why wasn't it patented back then before everyone else came up with the same idea? Sorry, guys. You snooze, you lose.
i was thinking about that soft update dealie. but i thought it was in '00.

[AirSluf]

XXXXX

[thuh Freak]

Patents also do not protect ideas, they protect implementations of ideas where those implementations are not obvious to those competent in the art. Thus it is very legal to have two things that do the same thing but have sufficiently different implementations. ftp+script seems a bit high level for calling it the implementation level.
well, they mention in the patent that it must use a non-proprietary protocol. it was the first one i thought of.

Also existing implementations of a technology before a patent is granted tend to lead to revocation when the proverbial stuff hits the fan. The patent office does not like the appearance of granting patents to run of the mill stuff and will pull-em faster than they grant them. They are not a first to the blackboard wins all operation, they are a first truly new and non-obvious extension of the art wins operation. Something VERY few IP lawyers have been able to convince their boards of yet. Plus if they did, they would be out jobs because there wouldn't be many lawsuits anymore.
in theory, the uspto is as you describe. but its not always the case in life. if the patent office had cs professionals on its staff, they likely would have noticed this brazen patent, or amazon's one from a couple of years ago, ms' double-click and countless others. and many small or nonprofit organizations may not have the resources to fight patents even with obvious prior art in the wild.

/me wishes the world was rid of the idea of software patents.

[Chinney]

It’s called “patent squatting”. Coming up with an “idea” (often just a slight modification of an existing technology – or no modification at all, as in some cases it is just something that has lain undeveloped in the public domain), registering a patent on it, doing nothing to develop it, waiting for a company to (generally quite separately) develop and implement the same or similar idea, and then suing them. Often these patent challenges can be successfully defended, but it is expensive to do so – so companies often just pay off the squatters.