Re: A troubling patent that SCO was granted

On Mon, 2003-09-01 at 00:15, Sean MacGuire wrote:
> Stephen L Johnson wrote:

> > 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.

The thing that I noticed was in the Detail Description section and a
couple of the claims. That is where one could get into trouble. 
> 
> 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 well remember that issue. It was a few months after I had discovered
Big Brother.

> 
> 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),

I think the PTO tossed out that requirement a long time ago. With the
PTO turned into a processing mill, examiners don't have enough time to
do any proper research.

>  they're on thin ice.  

Agreed. I think that RedHat's up2date and Debian's apt-get would blow
most of their claims away depending on timelines.

> That having been said, it costs about
> $500K to challenge a patent, so I don't imagine I'll be doing that :)

There are a couple of cheaper ways. One of that the public can request a
re-examination of the patent. I think that's around $2K.

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