I had an opportunity to ask NOiV's Maarten Wijnen-Meijer a few questions. Obviously, the most important question has to be, what happens now that OOXML has been approved as an ISO standard?

It's for a project the Kenya National Commission for Human Rights in Nairobi is doing to document and analyze the current post-election violence there. But I'll let him tell you about it himself.

We've talked about Media Sentry's methods from a technical angle before, in a prior Pick Your Brains request on what to ask Media Sentry for in the way of documents, and now their responses to the subpoenas have begun to arrive, so you might want to take a look at the affidavits in UMG v. Lindor. I have local copies, so you don't have to fight with cookies, Part I and Part II [PDFs]. Some interesting technical analysis is already coming in to the Recording Industry v. The People site as comments. I see someone immediately noticed that Media Sentry claims anyone can do what they do. (I expect that will be their defense in the NY case.) Yet they claim their methods are proprietary. See if you notice anything further. And Slashdot has it up too.

Barracuda includes ClamAV in some of its enterprise solutions, although it's a small part of what Barracuda does. And Trend Micro has accused ClamAV of infringing a patent it owns, #5,623,600. It specifically has named Barracuda Spam Firewall, the Barracuda Web Filter, and the Barracuda IM Firewall as infringing. Trend Micro has been trying to get Barracuda to either pay license royalties for including ClamAV or stop using ClamAV in its products.

Barracuda, however, is an Open Invention Network licensee, and it decided to stand up and defend ClamAV against what it views as a bogus claim. Barracuda believes the patent is questionable, at best, and believes there is prior art to be found, so it decided to defend ClamAV on behalf of the community, and it asks for our help in finding prior art. Here's the specific Barracuda request for prior art:

People should look for art dated prior to Trend Micro's filing date of September 26, 1995. The '600 patent is entitled "Virus Detection And Removal Apparatus For Computer Networks." We are interested in all material, including software, code, publications or papers, patents, communications, other media or Web sites that relate to the technology described prior to the filing date.

In particular, this prior art should show antivirus scanning on a firewall or gateway. However, many of the claims do not require virus detection at a gateway. So any material that illustrates virus scanning on a file server is also of interest.

We also believe that a product called MIMESweeper 1.0 from a company called Clearswift, Authentium, or Integralis anticipates several claims of the '600 patent. We have yet to locate a copy of this product and would appreciate anyone who has a copy sending it our way.

Litigation has begun, as I'll explain in detail in a minute, and there is a complaint filed by Trend Micro at the International Trade Commission, against Barracuda and Panda Software International and Panda Distribution of California, and the ITC decided on December 21st to investigate the complaint.

Here's how Trend Micro describes its patent in the ITC complaint:

To decrease the risk of a virus entering and/or leaving a network, the ‘600 Patent scans for viruses and other undesired software at the gateway of a network. Moreover, because viruses may be embedded in the content (such as, for example, email attachments and other content from the World Wide Web), the ‘600 Patent scans the content.

I know. You are rolling on the floor, gasping for breath because you are laughing so hard that anyone would even try to claim such an obvious thing as blocking viruses at the gateway. What can I tell you? Patents have gone berserk. For any who don't know what blocking at the gateway means, it's just that in the enterprise, you block before anything even reaches the employees' computers, as opposed to each one installing antivirus software individually. Obvious. Obvious. Obvious business method.

But believe it or not, that's what is being claimed as patented. I know. But with patents, what's the use in being surprised or indignant? The whole system has veered so far from true North that the best response at this point is to find prior art and knock them down one by one until the message is received that attacking FOSS with patents is counterproductive.

This time it comes from a company called InterSystems, which is a software company located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They've been targeted by a patent infringement lawsuit, along with the world and its dog. In Texas, naturally, despite the plaintiff, JuxtaComm, being located in Canada.

Let me tell you a little bit about the patent and I'll show you the request. JuxtaComm shows their patents on their home page, and here's the one in this litigation, SYSTEM FOR TRANSFORMING AND EXCHANGING DATA BETWEEN DISTRIBUTED HETEROGENEOUS COMPUTER SYSTEMS and they have a link so you can view it at the USPTO. I know. The title alone fairly screams obviousness, doesn't it? If anyone knows of any prior art before June of 1997, could you tell us about it?

The article shows me why education about patents and the patent process is important, as I see some misunderstanding about how it works. As you'll see, the article includes a complaint about the USPTO, that when someone with prior art to offer contacted the USPTO, he was more or less turned away. There's a reason for that, and the explanation will help you to understand the purpose for setting up the Peer to Patent project.

I'll let the lawyer, Ray Beckerman, explain the details and what he'd like you to do. Lawyers are experts in the law. You know the tech. Please explain it to him.

What data or documents should we ask MediaSentry for?

The Groklaw and Slashdot communities were so helpful in preparing for the deposition of the RIAA's "expert" witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson, we thought we'd come back and ask for your thoughts on what documents and/or data to request from the RIAA's 'investigator', MediaSentry, Inc. The documents produced so far are just printouts, which were used at Dr. Jacobson's deposition, specifically exhibits 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. Of course we have some ideas of our own about what to demand, but we want to leave no stone unturned.

It's an opportunity to help everyone become more technically accurate, and I'm sure the RIAA also wants to be certain that it has the right defendants, which is what the question fundamentally is. You may have read that the judge in the Atlantic v. Dangler case just ruled that the RIAA could not have a default judgment because of insufficient evidence:

Clearly, plaintiffs are entitled to relief if Dangler downloaded and distributed the Copyrighted Recordings without plaintiffs’ consent. The question this Court must decide is whether plaintiffs have proven that those circumstances exist here. Although the complaint establishes that someone using the “KaZaA” online peer-to-peer file sharing service uploaded the Copyrighted Recordings, or otherwise offered them for distribution, the complaint does not identify details such as the time period during which the violations allegedly took place, or explain how that user, identified only by the username heavyjeffmc@KaZaA, was determined to be the defendant.

Clearly, judges are becoming more technically clueful, and that's where you can definitely contribute in a positive way.

The public arguing back and forth didn't mean much to me. Even the Sun email [PDF] to NetApp the latter made public to bolster its side of the argument could be interpreted more than one way, and it was also clearly the middle of a conversation, with no way to know for certain what had happened before the email. It began, after all, "We are in receipt of your October 23, 2006 letter..." Personally, I think it's bad form to reveal private communications, but if you do, cherry picking one out of several isn't convincing to me, and anyway I like to reach conclusions based on what I see officially filed in courts. Compare what SCO told the media ("a mountain of infringing code") and what it told Judge Dale Kimball in a courthouse in Utah years later (in essence: "no code, but if you let us spring a surprise on IBM after discovery is closed, we can find maybe some methods and concepts to hit them with").

Update: Note that Sun now has a page on the NetApp litigation that provides an easy description of all the patents that even I can understand.

Update 2: Dave Hitz has now responded on his blog.