Via EFF Deeplinks -
Barracuda Networks Inc. today announced that it plans "to defend itself, the open source community and the free and open source Clam AntiVirus software from a patent by Trend Micro."
The patent at issue in the litigation is U.S. Patent Number 5,623,600 and is directed generally to virus detection and removal apparatus for computer networks.
Basically Trend Micro's claim is that Barracuda infringed its patent by incorporating into its products the free and open source Clam AntiVirus software, which scans for viruses at the mail gateway. EFF has long worried that bogus patent claims could threaten the free and open source software community, and we'll be watching this case closely. While this claim was made against a company using the tool, if it's successful the same argument could be targeted at a university or even an individual, so it's important to pay attention at the early stages.
Barracuda has asked for help from the community in seeking prior art for the patent, much as EFF does in its Patent Busting Project. As FSF's Eben Moglen says, "[c]ollective defense from software patents is a shared responsibility for everyone in the free software ecosystem.”
Speaking for myself, and not for my employer (Trend Micro), this whole argument of the patent infringement being about an attack on open source software is a complete red herring.
ReplyDeleteMike Rothman sums it best (on "The Daily Security Incite", Thu. 2008-01-31):
"I do have to say that the folks at Barracuda are master marketers. I'm still pulling splinters out of my backside from how they ate up the low end of the anti-spam business when I was in that game. Now they've focused their marketing muscle on trying to convince the open source community that Trend Micro's patent on gateway AV is a threat to the entire open source community. Actually, it's really just a threat to Barracuda's margins. This patent has been prosecuted and enforced. Trend won a case against Fortinet (which uses a proprietary AV engine) and they had to stop selling boxes until they cleaned up their code. The patent doesn't talk about any kind of specific AV engine, so this crap about being a threat to the open source community is just marketing hype. Theere are more specifics about Trend's intentions in this post. Say what you will about the patent system, and whether something like gateway AV can or should be under patent protection, but until the entire system changes - you need to pay the man. The Trend man in this case. It's a cost of being in that market, just like with Tumbleweed's patent on the email firewall. You hate writing the check, but you do it because spending a lot of money to fight it in court is a waste of time and you are going to lose. Barracuda wants to make this about open source and the open source fanboys are up in arms. But make no mistake, this is about profit and once again Barracuda is playing the open source community like a fiddle to build their business."
I couldn't have said it better myself. :-)
In any event, Brian Prince also has a "fair and balanced" report of the issue sin eWeek here.
Caveat: I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.
I guess we'll just have to wait and let the ITC rule on the matter.
- ferg
I had a feeling that post may get a comment from ya. =)
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