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| Barracuda Networks Countersues Trend Micro |
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Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 12:29 PM EDT
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There's some news on the Trend Micro v.Barracuda Networks case. That is the one where Trend Micro sued Barracuda over ClamAV and brought a complaint to the International Trade Commission. Barracuda has just filed a countersuit in California, alleging patent infringement by Trend Micro. They say it's a defensive use of three patents they bought from IBM. Barracuda asks for money damages and an injunction on further sales of infringing Trend Micro products. They plan to contribute proceeds, if they win, to the open source community.
“We are grateful to the open source community, many of whom have contributed significant prior art in our ongoing case against Trend Micro,” Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks, is quoted as saying in the press release, which I'll share with you. That would include us. This news follows the media reports that a Groklaw member came up with some very valuable prior art for Barracuda on top of all that you guys turned up as a group. You know how Red Hat said when it first started to file for patents that it was exclusively for defense purposes? Here's an example of when some software patents can come in handy.
Here's the press release:
*******************************
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BARRACUDA NETWORKS FILES COUNTERSUIT AGAINST TREND MICRO TO DEFEND ITS
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND USE OF OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE
Campbell, Calif., July 2, 2008 – Barracuda Networks Inc., the worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances, today announced it has filed a countersuit in the Court for the Central District of California against Trend Micro. The countersuit alleges that Trend Micro infringes upon three patents owned by Barracuda Networks and seeks damages and an injunction on sales of the infringing products.
This countersuit comes as Barracuda Networks continues to defend itself, the open source community and the free and open source ClamAV project, against a claim made by Trend Micro with the International Trade Commission (ITC). That claim alleges that Barracuda Networks infringes on Trend Micro's U.S. Patent No. 5,623,600 (‘600 patent), but effectively implies that anyone using the free and open source ClamAV software at the gateway infringes the patent. Barracuda Networks believes that the '600 patent is invalid and further believes that neither its products nor the ClamAV software infringe the patent.
“The reality is that Trend Micro is asking Barracuda Networks to pay for the use of the free and open source ClamAV software," said Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda Networks. "We have asserted all along that Trend Micro's actions are unjust and could have serious implications against the open source community and other free and open source projects."
In its countersuit, Barracuda Networks claims that Trend Micro infringes upon U.S. Patent Nos. 7,093,287; 7,093,294 and 7,103,913 which were purchased by Barracuda Networks in an effort to build an intellectual property (IP) portfolio for defense. These patents, purchased from IBM and developed at the world-renowned Thomas J. Watson Research Center, detail valuable methodologies for virus protection, spam and Web filtering, and intrusion detection.
“Barracuda Networks would prefer to focus on innovation, not litigation, so it is unfortunate that we must defend ourselves with a countersuit,” said Drako. “Innovation will lead to a safer Internet, litigation will not.”
If successful, Barracuda Networks plans to contribute all of the net proceeds to help the open source community.
“We are grateful to the open source community, many of whom have contributed significant prior art in our ongoing case against Trend Micro,” said Drako.
For more information on this issue, please visit www.barracuda.com/legal.
About Barracuda Networks Inc.
Barracuda Networks Inc. is the worldwide leader in email and Web security appliances. Barracuda Networks also provides world-class IM protection, application server load balancing, Web application security, and message archiving appliances. More than 50,000 companies, including Coca-Cola, FedEx, Harvard University, IBM, L'Oreal, and Europcar, are protecting their networks with Barracuda Networks’ solutions. Barracuda Networks' success is due to its ability to deliver easy to use, comprehensive solutions that solve the most serious issues facing customer networks without unnecessary add-ons, maintenance, lengthy installations or per user license fees. Barracuda Networks is privately held with its headquarters in Campbell, Calif. Barracuda Networks has offices in eight international locations and distributors in more than 80 countries worldwide. For more information, please visit www.barracuda.com.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 12:32 PM EDT |
| Please include links! [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: JamesK on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 12:32 PM EDT |
Post 'em if you find 'em
---
Duct tape is like The Force. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds
the universe together.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: JamesK on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 12:33 PM EDT |
Please include title.
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Duct tape is like The Force. It has a light side and a dark side, and it holds
the universe together.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Anger as IP 'sacrificed' for interoperability - Authored by: Alan(UK) on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 03:09 PM EDT
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- Anger as IP 'sacrificed' for interoperability - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 03 2008 @ 12:12 AM EDT
- Anger as IP 'sacrificed' for interoperability - Authored by: DannyB on Thursday, July 03 2008 @ 09:07 AM EDT
- Anger as LOCK-IN Rejected For Interoperability - Authored by: maz2331 on Thursday, July 03 2008 @ 11:29 AM EDT
- Title deleberately misleading - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 03 2008 @ 07:57 PM EDT
- Class action lawsuit against Apple - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 05:45 PM EDT
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| Authored by: BobinAlaska on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 12:34 PM EDT |
Please include links. Sorry about the anonymous one wasn't logged in.
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Bob Helm, Juneau, Alaska
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| Authored by: joef on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 12:55 PM EDT |
| Fight the fire with a backfire. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 12:56 PM EDT |
But patent fighting is dangerous :)
They are better as a threatening tool, once they are used, they can quickly turn
out to be invalidated.
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 01:35 PM EDT |
Barracuda Networks is employing a very effective tactic:
1) Provide a
defense in such a way as to effectively limit any damage caused by the
opponent.
However, they've combined it with another tactic which is very
effective in making other's who would also attack think twice before starting
"another war":
2) Attack with such force that those who started the war are
punished for the path they choose. Punishment should be at least a multiple
greater then the harm they would have caused.
Barracuda Networks is only
attacking with a factor of 3. My preferred is a factor of 10. I've found it
very effective in keeping the peace.
Personally, I think our lawcourts
should enact such punishments as well. It should be built in with an initial
factor cost that increases with each repeat offense that is
convicted.
For example, the initial factor for non-heinous crimes is at
1.5x. The second offense at 3x, the third offense at 6x... in short, keep
increasing the previous punishment by a factor of 2x the previous factor. Note
that this should be on top of the cost of keeping a person in jail. The cost of
commiting a crime will be easy to pay initially (perhaps) but quickly get
increasingly more expensive till the cost of the crime significantly outweighs
any benefit of the crime.
On top of that, any time spent in jail should
have the costs of that paid by the guilty. It should not be up to society to
foot the bill of keeping an inmate in jail. In such a situation, you'll have a
system that deters all but the most non-deterable people. With such people,
there is nothing that can deter them.
I define non-heinous as those
crimes that do not result in the bodily harm to a human-life. For example,
let's say a cat-burgler is found guilty to having stolen $100,000. Then his
punishment is equivalent to $150,000 as this is a first offense. Repeat
offences would be as follows:
- Second offense, guilty of $200,000,
factor of 3x: Cost = $600,000.
- Third offense, guilty of
$15,000, factor of 6x: Cost = $90,000
- Fourth offense, guilty of
$150,000, factor of 12x: Cost = $1,800,000
No matter how rich
you are, you'll reach a point it truly doesn't pay to do crime.
Of
course, by repeat, I'm talking repeat equivalent offences. A speeding ticket
would not be grouped into the same grouping with robbing a bank. However,
repeat speeding tickets should keep going up by factors as well.
When it
comes to heinous crimes.... well... the punishment should come with an even
higher cost. It's a bit unjust that a person who beats another seems to have a
cost associated that is smaller then a child downloading happy birthday for her
mp3 player. On that note, the costs of each of those seem to fit into two
seperate categories. The person who beat another would be charged criminally.
The child would generally be sued civilly. I wonder if the cost to the criminal
can be increased by the victims bringing a civil lawsuit. That might make
things a bit more Just with regards the punishments for
criminals.
Caveat: I'm nowhere near wise enough to know the true impact
of the above on Society. In short: take it as my own opinion on how Society can
protect itself better without having to resort to giving up it's rights of
freedom.
RAS[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: cm16 on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 01:35 PM EDT |
It would be interesting to know if they purchased their patents from IBM before
or after the suit was filed...
Were they possibly sort of a donation from IBM to help their case?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 02:08 PM EDT |
TrendMicro has been on my list for about 18 months as a company that I will
never do business with again. About 3 years ago I purchased a 1 year contract
for PC-cillin based upon both technical reviews, using the corporate version on
a laptop required to access a client VPN and the availability of a 3 PC home
license. I renewed it a couple of times for a year at a time, then based upon a
positive experience bought the 3 year license for the 2007 product. All of a
sudden the daily virus signature updates were taking 15 minutes, vs the less
than 1 minute the prior version used. I spent much time with tech support,
changed many settings with no improvement. Wrote the US GM for TrendMicro and
after follow up calls to make sure that he received the letter, NEVER received a
response.
So, that was a very long way of saying, may the force be with barracuda.
Dave
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- Trend Micro - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 03 2008 @ 11:02 AM EDT
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| Authored by: Aladdin Sane on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 03:16 PM EDT |
| Many, including me, want to roll over and be loved by Barracuda Network's
hardware/software solutions. Certainly the recent counter-suit only adds to the
desire.
But I remember significant technical controversy on Groklaw over
the backscatter issue caused by their "anti-spam" devices. Not being an e-mail
admin, I don't have a significant understanding of the issue, I admit.
What
is the status of this issue? Can we fully love Barracuda, or are they still a
subject of some debate?
I note they address the issue on their support web
site:
How can I prevent
"Backscatter" on my Barracuda Spam Firewall?
Also, does anyone know for
sure whose hardware they are re-branding? I thought it was Dell's, but I wasn't
absolutely sure.
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Form follows function. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: bbaston on Wednesday, July 02 2008 @ 04:55 PM EDT |
"Eyeballs for ODF" feedback goes here. PJ says:
"Stay polite at
all times, of course, if you say anything, and you needn't say anything, but do
follow along and please keep us posted on anything you see that sounds
peculiar", and later adds, "Do whatever is possible to avoid engagement
with trolls, here and there."
ODF
Implementation, Interoperability and Conformance links: formation, archive, draft
charter , and #oiic logs.
By
registering for OASIS OIIC Discussion, you can monitor #oiic [requires chat
program such as xchat or Firefox's ChatZilla addin] at
irc.freenode.net and then /join #oiic. Please follow
PJ's guidelines on #oiic. ---
IMBW, IANAL2, IMHO, IAVO
imaybewrong, iamnotalawyertoo, inmyhumbleopinion, iamveryold [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, July 03 2008 @ 10:41 AM EDT |
It is my understanding that the intention of the patent laws is to stimulate
innovation. They do this by granting the inventor a limited monopoly on the
manufacture of their invention. However, to stimulate innovation, the inventor
is supposed to grant, in exchange, implied permission for others to make copies
of the invention and to reverse engineer those copies in order to find a more
innovative way of accomplishing the same thing. Without these implied
permissions, innovation cannot happen. Copyrights, on the other hand, are
designed to give the holder protection against any form of copying, except for
fair use, without their permission.
It would appear, to me at least, that patent protection and copyright protection
are incompatible. So I guess my question is: Does the application of a patent to
copyrighted software nullify the copyrights or vice versa?
CAK[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 04 2008 @ 07:36 AM EDT |
I am still mad that Barracuda will not allow you to sell a used spam filter.
They would rather force the sale of a new piece of hardware rather than permit
you to subscribe to the spam filter subscription when someone else no longer
needs the hardware. That is not very green friendly.
http://weblog.infoworld.com/gripeline/archives/2008/06/barracuda_sneak.html<
/a>
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