Re: TrendMicro goes Douchebag

[Nick FitzGerald <nick () virus-l demon co uk>]

Larry Seltzer wrote:

> I'm not defending the patent and I don't remember everything from when
> they talked about it to me, but I do believe it was important to the
> patent that it operated as a proxy. Perhaps MIMESweeper didn't work as a
> proxy?

Based on Trend's subsequent actions regarding enforcement, it seems 
that "being a dedicated scanning device" is the key thing, and _that_ 
is why the patent fails the "obviousness" test for any vaguely clueful 
techie...

In short, Trend is effectively admitting that it did not invent the 
idea of passthrough Email virus scanning, merely the (obvious) 
procedural "improvement" of off-loading that overhead workload to a 
dedicated scanning machine via (the equally obvious, particularly for a 
protocol designed from the ground up for relaying and proxying) a 
proxy.

And _that's_ why -- sorry ferg -- many folk quite rightly IMNSHO think 
of Trend in terms such as "douchebag" for trying to enforce this 
clearly bogus patent.  (If it had simply used the patent as a defensive 
patent, parrying other vendor's patent infringement claims with this 
one it would be a different matter -- still a bogus patent, but 
"somewhat reasonably" used only in its own defense...)


Regards,

Nick FitzGerald

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