If I wanted to prove a date, I'd probably send the materials to myself by mail, and then I'd keep the package unopened.

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I'd probably choose either certified or registered mail, if I had any concerns about losing it in the mail, for example if it was the only copy of something, so I would have a way to check up on it.

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jumpstart (sun?) kickstart (redhat) up2date (redhat) apt-get (debian)

Many, many, many home grown systems...

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I don't have any prior art in my back pocket, but I knew of a number of UNIX systems that had the ability to report who was running what, restart failed processes, and alert sysops when needed. Pushing updates down the pipe to client machines, and watching the machines for errors ... that's been happening for 5 years or so, within corporations. It's nothing new, just repackaged as a "service" to sell.

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Um, perhaps I'm just missing something here, but doesn't this sound a lot like what M$ has been doing for years with
its networking management, especially with Systems Management Server and (more recently) with Active Directory under
Win2K? Not the example I would have preferred, but don't those count as "prior art"??

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Microsoft SMS, HP OpenView, CA Unicenter TNG, Nortel Optivity, some ISS RealSecure functionality, plus many many others.

The USPTO is useless

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Software and process patents should really nave been banned.

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www.cfengine.org

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MajorLeePissed: the USPTO isn't useless, its downright dangerous.

Can you challenge a patent without first being sued for infringement?

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All of those towns you mention from the patent filing are in the Interstate 295 - Route 3 corridor just west of Lowell, MA and north of the Route 128 belt. At one time, it was a major center for computer development; companies like Wang, DEC, Data General, Prime, GE/Honeywell/Bull had plants in the area. I spent the first 30-odd years of my life around those parts.

Didn't old SCO/Tarantella have an office in that area?

"Method and apparatus for monitoring computer systems and alerting users of actual or potential system errors" sounds like what I normally do with syslog - each peripheral Unix/Linux system on a network sends it log info to a central system where alerts can be displayed and/or used for later analysis. I've been doing that forever.

The Abstract and Summary could also be interpreted as a License Manager; SCO has used one in OpenServer since it first came out in about 1995, but they certainly weren't the first.

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Anyone can submit prior-art citations to the USPTO; from their manual, here's the citation. The same goes for requesting a reexamination .

All the rules for patent reexamination are in their manual in .

The prior art must appear in a printed publication. It's not clear from their rules if a computer program qualifies as a "printed publication".

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All the rules for patent reexamination are in their manual in Section 2200.

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You can read all about it at http://www.openpegasus.org, which offers evidence that it's been in development since 1999, & that one of the sponsors of the project was Caldera.

Geoff

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Ahhh.... Acrylis was run by Reg Broughton, mostly known now for selling off lots and lots of his Scaldera stock.

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Also, every cell phone carrier (Sprint, Verizon, Nextel, etc.) uses a CPE based managed care system for all cell phones on thier network. This can be traced back to at least 1992 or earlier with respect to the old AMPS style Motorola M7 bricks.

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Patents are the bane of the software world and are destroying the small independent programmer. Europe votes on software patents tomorrow. The free software people have spent the last week putting up notices on their web pages and organizing protests. You might have noticed that most open source projects are hosted by European servers. Odds are that if Europe votes to join the US and Japan on software patents that most of those sites will disappear. Not much we can do from here other than try to bug our own congressmen to sponsor a bill repealing software patents.

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SCO's patent is like that. It references a handful of other patents that cover all of the territory of using TCP/IP to query agents installed on clients, install software, check status, and results. The fact is that they mention almost all of the things like HP's Openview and such right in their patent. They are aware of the prior art and apparently think they have a better method.

This is a patent for those unique "methods" of doing all of those things. Over 60 methods are in the "claims" section. The only type of software that would be threatened by this patent are things that use TCP/IP to monitor and install software from a central server using agents installed on the clients. Things like apt-get, urpmi,and up2date etc. are client side software and are not really what they mean. You have to look at their patented "methods" before saying you've found some prior art.

Novell recently purchased Ximian. They have an Enterprise Edition of Red Carpet that sells for a few thousand dollars. That sort of software might be affected by this patent, but only if SCO's "methods" are being used.

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Ah, yes, the same governmental body that awarded the trademark rights to the term "Linux"
to one William R. Della Croce some years back. Truly useless indeed.

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In all likelyhood, there are 100's, if not 1,000's of cron jobs doing most, if not all, of the functions described in the patent.

As Karsten Self told PJ "Much of this is the sort of thing any half-competent 'Nix system administrator ends up setting up to manage their network or cluster."

Competent 'nix Admins are known to automate everything. Half competent ones, just don't automate as much. PHB's buy overpriced "administration" software and hire PFYs and wonder why the systems and networks are not reliable...

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Published work for the SNMP started with RFC 1067, in 1988, by the Network Working Group, here's the link:

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1067.ht ml

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It actually was no accident at all. If you remember Linus reaction to setting up a screening process for misappropriated IP coming into the kernel, you'll recall that he said he did't want to be aware of those sorts of things in the first place.

In the BSDI case, one element in AT&T's logic was that the BSD developers were ALL source code licensees, and that they couldn't do a clean room reverse engineering job on Unix, because they had spent years immersed in the AT&T system code. The fact that Ximian has former employees of Caldera makes them vulnerable to questions on whatever methods they use. A couple of days ago gumout mentioned Computer Associates v Altai Inc. an element in that case was a programmer who had worked for hire trying to reuse old code and ideas with a new employer. In the end Altai could take care of the copyright infringment by rewriting 30 percent of the code, because copyright doesn't really protect methods.

In this example, Erskine would have to avoid using the same methods, that's probably a much harder thing to do.

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Yes this solution isn't aimed at a 'nix admin at all.

You also left out the part about using the same heuristic rule set on lots of machines resulting in 1000's of cookie-cutter installs and how happy that makes the per-CPU licensor.

A competent 'nix admin would use a central app server or something like the Linux Terminal Server Project if simple scripted software management was not enough. One reason IBM is taking all of SUN's lunch money right now is server consolidation.Thousands of workstations or clients with unecessary software duplication can be just as bad.

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I won't list every thing example but three of the biggeis are Microsoft's SMS, IBM's Tivoli, and Computer Associates' Unicenter. And there are lots of Open Source examples that cover parts of the patient. Include one that I develop called Spong. (http://spong.sf.net/ for those interested.)

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Satan Claims Opensource

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No they didn't. They just patented "their method" of doing it. The patent itself references five or so previous patents that are owned by Apple, Intel, etc. and then says:

"Existing system monitoring and management tools, such as the Hewlett-Packard Company's Openview system or the Computer Associates International, Inc.'s Unicenter systems, employ agents running on target computer systems."

Obviously they and the USPTO are aware of the "existing system monitoring tools", "Openview", and "Unicenter" they are mentioned by name in the patent itself.

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KPL

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Competent unix sysadmins were doing the stuff that AT&T, SUN, HP, et al filed patents on, prior to the patents. The prior art is in comp.os.unix. And the annals of SysAdmin Magizine, and many, many books and articles published for thirty years, and more. Then we can look at what the other OS players were doing. Like DEC's VMS or HP's MPE or the PICK system. Of course we should also look at what the progammers working on 'Big Iron' did.

All I can say is that the patent granted to SCOG will likely be invalidated by massive prior art. If there is anybody willing to take on the task.

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I forget that it's all on the claims. After reading the claims, I still find the patent still very questionable. I think the patent rules invalid with thorough re-examination.

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I know that Canon and Kyocera are or were slugging it out over patents for device management using SNMP that did stupid things like reset a counter. The point is that there are so many ways to skin a cat that owning a patent on just one doesn't give you much leverage (hopefully).

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This patent is a bad thing for clusters and clustering with Linux.

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Part of/distributed with Debian, Knoppix (I think, have to check), Mandrake and SuSE, that I know of.

Once again, this is a bad thing for Linux Clustering Projects.

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You know all those "War Room" maps you see on movies and on the TV, especially when it comes to worldwide networks or military infrastuctures? That's TNG.

http://www3.ca.com/Solut ions/Solution.asp?ID=315

Been around since 1991. Pretty fancy. VERY expensive. VERY impressive. Integrates with BOTH Peoplesoft and SAP R/2 AND R/3 (those control centers are normally on the same floor and down the hall from the CEO. The corps' BoD often meet in these rooms, at least briefly. Allows live provisioning of IT (including individual seervers, drives, tape robots), network resources and contract negotiation on the fly, as well as many other tangible and intangible network assets. I've been involved in 120K+ device implementations that go all the way down to individual HPCs, Palms and cellphones.

The out-of-the-box control schema is based on a globe. You granularize from there. Even satellite assets (in space!) can be accurately represented and controlled in real time.

Whole package has its own scripting language and modules that allow Python, Java, c/C++ and other language support. Certification as a developer can take years and is VERY formalized.

Don't see the difference between what SCUMX is doing and Unicenter.

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It's a little something I invented as a Nigerian-Scammer Repellent - unfortunately some will keep re-emailing. I suppose I really should go visit them under the assumption that by continuing to email me, they have in fact volunteered to test this new and improved Leopard Repellent. How boring.

It is at present the only Condom on or _NOT_ on the market, that comes with volume controls as well. And that is something nobody will find any prior art for, I'll bet.

As Follows:

Dear Member,

We carried out the test as per your instructions. The man and the woman were duly connected with the Screw-in Screw-on Stainless-Steel Condom (Registered Trade Mark) of The Pentagon (with Volume Controls), and left in [censored] National Park.

Unfortunately the current theory is wrong. The leopard ate them both.

So apparently the Screw-in Screw-on Stainless-Steel Condom (R) of The Pentagon (with Volume Controls) does not in fact work at the moment as a Leopard Repellent. (Note: We pre-tested them with a house cat and the house cat was duly repelled - perhaps the tuning was out?)

Perhaps we need to find a more compliant leopard? Should we begin the next stage of the plan - breeding a leopard that can be reliably predicted to be repelled by a man and a woman connected by the Screw-in Screw-on Stainless-Steel Condom(R) of The Pentagon? What would you suggest? More volume controls? We are relying on your sterling reputation and your renowned ability to keep a confidence.

We also need more volunteers. Would you perhaps like to serve as a volunteer for the new and improved Screw-in Screw-on Stainless-Steel Condom (R) The Pentagon Leopard Repellent (Patent Pending)? With electronic stimulation? And volume controls?

We need more people like you - young, fit and courageous - to test the new theories of leopard repulsion that have sprung out of the development of the Screw-in Screw-on Stainless-Steel Condom (R) of The Pentagon.

And remember, if you repel the leopard, you get to keep the girl!

Signed, With all due respect

The Grand Panjandrum

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Well, I can understand people's wrath at the USPTO. As far as I can tell, the USPTO knows very little about software outside of software patents. Unfortunately a patent examiner has a fixed budget of time - like 40 hours - to do **all** the work involved in processing a patent, including the prior art search. As is so clear from the postings above, in software a huge percentage of the art is software products, source code (yes, it is valid prior art), manuals, Readmes, etc. And they have a library they work out of, and it is NOT full of product manuals, and does not contain most software journals. So if all they can do is a small number of hours of research in US patents, many obviously old ideas will appear to be new. My experience is that in general less than 50% of all US patents are novel to "one skilled in the art", and less than 40% of software patents are novel.

If SCO chooses to assert these patents we can easily put together a massive prior art search. You go thru the patent and make a list in the simplest clearest language of the main technical feature(s) of each claim, and then you list found references that have that feature. You make a 'claims chart' with claims across the top, and references going down and mark which references cover which claims. Best of all is one reference which includes all features of the patents. We make a list of all the journals, conference proceedings, software products (by revision), theses, dissertations, etc. And we post a short document on our proceedure and set up a central repository where people send found art and let us know which references they have checked. And we need a patent lawyer.

Remember that many patent issues are settled in front of juries, and juries are mostly made up of people who are so bored that they want to be on a jury, or people who aren't clever enough to escape jury duties. So patent attorneys aren't just looking for a reference that is similar, they ideally want the same words used to describe the invention.

IF art is already cited in the patent (like HP Openview) the presumption is that the examiner already took this into account. This presumption can be overturned but it is extra work. Fortunately, there is no shortage of places to look for this puppy.

So yes, if someone had the money, they could file for re-examination of SCO's patents. Just remember that if we fail to knock out ONE SINGLE CLAIM of ONE PATENT they will have a certified potent weapon to go sue people with. Of course the process will take a long time, and they might bleed to death from all the legal costs - wouldn't that be a shame?

This is a lot of work. IF SCO asserts their patent(s) and if we find a willing patent attorney, odds are good that I would be willing to coordinate the search and act as the repository. I'd need someone to set me up with a website and tool set where we could post our 'want lists', FAQ, 'how to', progress, etc.

I'm in the SF bay area

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"In order for an invention to be patentable it must be new as defined in the patent law, which provides that an invention cannot be patented if: “(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent,” or “(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country more than one year prior to the application for patent in the United States . . .”

"If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere in the world, or if it has been in public use or on sale in this country before the date that the applicant made his/her invention, a patent cannot be obtained. If the invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere, or has been in public use or on sale in this country more than one year before the date on which an application for patent is filed in this country, a patent cannot be obtained. In this connection it is immaterial when the invention was made, or whether the printed publication or public use was by the inventor himself/herself or by someone else. If the inventor describes the invention in a printed publication or uses the invention publicly, or places it on sale, he/she must apply for a patent before one year has gone by, otherwise any right to a patent will be lost. The inventor must file on the date of public use or disclosure, however, in order to preserve patent rights in many foreign countries."

"Even if the subject matter sought to be patented is not exactly shown by the prior art, and involves one or more differences over the most nearly similar thing already known, a patent may still be refused if the differences would be obvious. The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention. For example, the substitution of one color for another, or changes in size, are ordinarily not patentable."

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This part of the patent law seems to be TOTALLY ignored by the patent office. Many software patents which are uphead as enforceable are not just obvious to someone with ordinary skill, they're obvious to people with little or no skill in the area related to the invention.

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http://www.webmin.com/changes.html

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1. The vast majority of programming is done by individuals working for companies that use the programs internally (95% by most estimations). This "art" is just "getting the job done" and ancillary to a company's main business.

2. Many programming ideas were tried in the early days of computing and discarded, mainly because computer horsepower was lacking.

3. As evidenced here, many ideas have been used before the advent of software patents, so there's a dearth of generally available documentation.

So, the only way to uncover prior art for software is as we are doing here: put out the call to practitioners of the art. But the sheer volume of software patents being filed would preclude this from being practical.

The result is a system that can't work fairly and fails to "promote the progress of science and useful arts".

There was an incredible amount of "progress of science and useful arts" in software before patenting was allowed. Now, that progress is mired in the quicksand of spurious claims like "one-click" and "hyperlinks", and held hostage to patent portfolios used as an offensive weapon.

That is not what our founding fathers intended.

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Yes that's what I meant. Grakster shouldn't worry about this. Caldera can't have supported it's development as an open source project, published the source code, and then decided to patent it or anything derived from it of an obvious nature.

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