Re: A troubling patent that SCO was granted

Stephen L Johnson wrote:
> 
> I've been follow the SCO vs IBM case and side battles with a
> professional and personal interest. Normally I wouldn't ever think of
> mentioning it here. But I found this bit of news at GROKLAW, a blog
> about the SCO case. http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/
> 
> The news is of a patent that SCO received in March. There is a link to
> the patent at the PTO web site.
> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=/netahtml/search-adv.htm&r=3&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&p=1&p=1&S1=Caldera&OS=Caldera&RS=Caldera
> 
> This patent has claims that covers what Big Brother, my own Spong
> package do and numerous other commercial and Open Source System/Network
> Monitoring and Centralized System Configuration Management packages.
> 
> I'm still not sure of what to make it: being concernedwith being sued or
> laughing my head off.

Hey Stephen!

Well, it's basically a patent on a management method, not 
monitoring (as we do), per se, so I wouldn't  worry about it.

Interesting to note, BTW, that I originally published the source code
to Big Brother in the March 1997 issue of SysAdmin for the precise
reason
of ensuring that nobody try to patent it (i.e. the first web
based system and network monitor).

I have since been contacted twice by the USPTO and have pointed them
at this published stuff.  Given the dates of the SCO patents (as well
as the fact that what they're doing isn't novel to one skilled in the
art), they're on thin ice.  That having been said, it costs about
$500K to challenge a patent, so I don't imagine I'll be doing that :)
-- 
Sean MacGuire                                      [email protected]
Quest Software                                   http://bb4.com
icbm --> 45'31.06N-73'35.19W                    +1 514 996 4638
              "Looking down the barrel of another day"
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