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RE: [VANILLA-LIST:3019] technical question
Hi everyone.
Thanks for all of your great responses! I still have some questions based
on what you've all said and some reading I've done, so I'll intersperse them
between what you guys wrote, along with any comments I have regarding this
patent
or patents in general. My new questions/comments are in ALL CAPS.
> Carlos Y. Villalpando [SMTP:unbelver@us.netrek.org] wrote:
>
> > The patent claims (claim 1 in the patent) a group message server, a
> > bunch of hosts connected to the server through the internet, the
> > ability to form groups among the hosts, and the ability of a host in
> > a group to send a message to the server, that the server then
> > forwards out to everyone in the group. Furthermore, the group
> > message server must be able to aggregate messages, i.e. if the
> > server receives a bunch of messages addressed to a group, it can
> > concatenate them and send them out in a single packet.
>
> If its plain text messaging, you're describing 'irc,' or Internet Relay
> Chat, that has been around for quite some time.
>
I READ THE IRC SPEC (RFC 1459) AND IT MAKES NO MENTION OF
ANY AGGREGATION -- THE SERVERS JUST FORWARD OUT MESSAGES
SEPARATELY TO EVERY GROUP MEMBER. IT'S BEEN SUGGESTED
TO ME THAT PLAIN OLD SOCKET OUTPUT BUFFERING DOES THE
AGGREGATION DESCRIBED IN THE PATENT, BUT I DON'T SEE IT.
I THINK THE PATENT CLAIMS AGGREGATION OF PACKETS, AND
FURTHERMORE THE AGGREGATION IS DONE BEFORE THE
PACKETS ARE ENQUEUED TO GO TO ANY SPECIFIC GROUP
MEMBERS -- THE AGGREGATION IS DONE FOR THE WHOLE
GROUP BEFORE THE PACKETS ARE SENT OUT TO ALL GROUP
MEMBERS VIA UNICAST. SO AM I CORRECT IN SAYING IRC
DOESN'T 'READ ON' THE CLAIM? (IF I'M WRONG OR IF THERE'S
ANY MORE DOCUMENTATION I SHOULD KNOW ABOUT, *PLEASE*
TELL ME!)
Dave Ahn [ahn@vec.wfubmc.edu] wrote:
May I ask what your motivation is? Does your client have a product that
may be infringing on the patent?
YES, WE SPECIALIZE IN SERVING SMALL TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES. ONE OF
OUR CLIENTS, A COMPANY THAT HASN'T YET GONE PUBLIC, IS BEING SUED BY
THE HOLDER OF THIS PATENT. IF WE DON'T WIN, IT COULD BE VERY BAD NEWS.
... the mailing list
analogy should help in invalidating the patient, particularly claims #2-6.
In a mailing list, a group consists of list subscribers. A group message
is an email intended for the list subscribers. The plurality of host
computers consists of mail reader clients and/or the sendmail servers
accepting messages for list subscribers. Unicast wide area network is
SMTP over TCP/IP. Group messaging server is the mailing list manager
and sendmail server that sends out group messages. An aggregated message
is a digest message consisting of list email collected over a period of
time.
MY UNDERSTANDING FROM READING RFCs 821(SMTP) 1429 (LISTSERV DISTRIBUTE
PROTOCOL)
AND A COUPLE OF OTHERS, IS THAT MAIL TO A GROUP IS SENT SEPARATELY TO EACH
SERVER THAT HAS MEMBERS IN THE GROUP. ALSO, I COULDN'T
FIND MENTION OF ANY AGGREGATED MESSAGE OR DIGEST MESSAGE IN
THOSE DOCUMENTS. COULD YOU PLEASE POINT ME TO A SOURCE
THAT DESCRIBES THIS OR TELL ME WHAT I MISSED?
Since you asked for specific relevance to Netrek, I will list and address
the claims from the patent...
THANKS! I WON'T REPEAT YOUR EXPLANATION HERE, BUT I THINK IT
MIGHT MAKE OUR CASE! OF COURSE, I'M NOT GOING TO STOP LOOKING
FOR MORE STUFF. ;-)
> Um, Yes, I believe. How to prove it? Who's got netrek_acm.pdf?
I do, but it was published in 1997.
DAVE -- COULD YOU PLEASE MAIL IT TO ME AND/OR POINT ME TO A LINK TO IT?
I suspect that this attorney is trying to overturn the patent by the
"broad usage" method. You can challenge a patent by filing your own
patent, then proving that there is a conflict with the other patent
(I forgot the term for this motion.) Or, you can challenge a patent
by asserting that the idea is not original enough to be patentable.
THAT'S CALLED AN 'INTERFERENCE'. THE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU CAN ONLY
PROVOKE AN INTERFERENCE WITH A PATENT THAT IS CURRENTLY
BEING EXAMINED. ONCE A PATENT IS GRANTED, YOU CANNOT PROVOKE
AN INTERFERENCE. YOU ARE RIGHT -- I AM TRYING TO INVALIDATE THE
PATENT BY SHOWING THAT OTHER PEOPLE (YOU GUYS) WERE DOING
THIS ALREADY, THE 'BROAD USAGE' METHOD.
If we're really concerned about this, we should contact FSF and the
open source community to patent the concept on our behalf, then hand
over the patent to FSF for unrestricted, royalty-free usage for anyone
for any purpose. This would prevent other companies from trying to
patent this concept again.
UNFORTUNATELY, YOU CAN NO LONGER PATENT SOMETHING THAT YOU
HAVE BEEN USING PUBLICLY FOR OVER A YEAR. IN COUNTRIES
OTHER THAN THE U.S., YOU CAN'T PATENT IT IF YOU'VE BEEN
USING IT PUBLICLY FOR ANY TIME AT ALL! BUT NO ONE CAN
PATENT THIS STUFF IF YOUR WORK IS FOUND AND USED AS
A REFERENCE AGAINST THOSE TRYING TO PATENT IT. SINCE
THIS PATENT HAS ALREADY BEEN GRANTED, WE'LL HAVE TO
TAKE THE PAINFUL ROUTE OF DEFEATING IT IN LITIGATION.
Kurt Siegl [007@freemail.at] wrote:
If you consider also game steering commands as messages, yes we can also
fulfill this one and with short packages we have some nice package
compression
algorithms, worth an own patent ;-) All other things are fulfilled
trivially.
IF YOU'VE BEEN USING CODE THAT DOES THIS FOR AT LEAST A YEAR, YOU CAN'T
PATENT IT ANYMORE, EVEN IF THE USERS DON'T KNOW HOW IT'S BEING DONE.
Alec Habig [habig@budoe2.bu.edu] wrote:
Nope - everything goes through the server. My client never talks
directly to yours. The server doles out messages to the recipients on a
need-to-know basis.
GREAT! THE PATENT SPECIFIES EXACTLY THAT PROCESS -- MESSAGES
GO THROUGH THE SERVER TO THE RECIPIENT(S). SO NETREK
'ANTICIPATES' THE CLAIM, RENDERING IT INVALID. (I HOPE ;-)
However, Bolo did peer-to-peer. As did Doom, until the ID guys got
tired of crushing LAN's across the world and went to netrek-style
communications. peer-to-peer doesn't work really well for gaming
applications -- too much traffic and too easy to cheat.
THAT KIND OF STUFF (LIKE KALI) DOESN'T 'READ ON' THE CLAIMS.
THE SERVER JUST HELPS PEOPLE GET A GAME TOGETHER --
THEIR MESSAGES DURING THE GAME ARE POINT TO POINT, AS
YOU SAY.
MANY THANKS TO CARLOS, DAVE, AND KURT FOR TELLING
ME WHERE TO LOOK FOR DOCUMENTATION! I'M GOING TO
START LOOKING THROUGH STUFF, AND I MAY HAVE
MORE TECHNICAL QUESTIONS FOR YOU GUYS LATER.
-- Jay
Kurt Siegl [007@freemail.at]:
On ftp://ftp.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/pub/netrek/src/
you will find some files which stay there untouched since 1992, and I should
be able to find even older ones, but that's not necessary anyway.
What you need for example is calvin-2.2pl3.tar.gz a Netrek Server placed on
this
ftp server in Sept. 1993 and BRM.3.00pl3.tar.gz a netrek client untouched
since
Jan 1994.
On ftp://ftp.risc.uni-linz.ac.at/pub/netrek/hints/ you will find lots of
documentations and playing tips all untouched since 1993.
DAVE AHN:
There is a multitude of source code archived at
ftp://ftp.netrek.org/pub/netrek/
There are plenty of documentation (many of which may not be relevant) that
are linked off of www.netrek.org.
In particular, you should read the History of Netrek, through Jan 1 1994.
http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~netrek/history/History.html
The source and various documents have references or copyright statements
dating back to the 1980's. There are complete source packages that date
to the early 90's, probably even before. The calvin server has timestamps
from July 1993.
CARLOS Villalpando:
> > My basic question is: does Netrek do all of this stuff and how can I
> prove
> > it?
>
> Um, Yes, I believe. How to prove it? Who's got netrek_acm.pdf?
> There's a published paper. When was it published? I've got it at
> home, not here. And that C|Net article. It states that netrek's
> release date was 1989 on the page.
>
> http://www.gamecenter.com/Features/Exclusives/Top40games/ is the head and,
> http://www.gamecenter.com/Features/Exclusives/Top40games/ss07.html is
> where netrek is.
>
> And there's all our documentation at www.netrek.org
>
>