Based on a 1995 US patent, it seems Trend Micro are threatening to sue Barracuda Networks for the latter's inclusion of ClamAV in a firewall product.
I think Groklaw did a good article with info and links (thanks PJ and Sean): http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080125135544713
Other articles: http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/01/29/1313206.shtml http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080129-barracuda-defends-open-source-...
Related Wikipedia articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clam_AntiVirus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_and_free_software
On 30/01/2008, Ciaran O'Riordan ciaran@fsfe.org wrote:
Based on a 1995 US patent, it seems Trend Micro are threatening to sue Barracuda Networks for the latter's inclusion of ClamAV in a firewall product. I think Groklaw did a good article with info and links (thanks PJ and Sean): http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080125135544713
You know, I was just about to ask if they'd gotten Groklaw on the case ;-)
All it'll take is a few more Groklawings and only the most odious patent troll will *dare* try it on with free software. How to get an exhaustive prior art search done turning up results back to Leonardo da Vinci ...
- d.
I hope they find the necessary prior art, but I think this is also interesting from the point of view of making the software patent problem understandable to politicians.
Spam and viruses are social problems. Trend Micro are giving us an example to cite so that we can explain to MEPs that software patents block solutions to social problems.
I'm wondering if/how we should build on this...
On Wed, 2008-01-30 at 20:42 +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
I hope they find the necessary prior art, but I think this is also interesting from the point of view of making the software patent problem understandable to politicians.
Spam and viruses are social problems. Trend Micro are giving us an example to cite so that we can explain to MEPs that software patents block solutions to social problems.
I'm wondering if/how we should build on this...
Diseases are real social problems too but yet we have patents on drugs.
Careful it's a slippery slope.
Simo.