A string of patented cloud technologies: where is this all going?
Over the last few days, there has been a string of announcements by companies who work in the cloud.
Asankya has been issued the patent number 7,742,404. Their press release was pretty vague: "Asankya's solution differs from conventional network monitoring, which allows only limited flexibility in choosing what type of traffic is captured and subsequently analyzed.".
Then cloud.cm let the whole world know that "its team of computer engineers are planning to develop the first prototype laptop that works exclusively on the world-wide web". They probably didn't hear about Chrome OS, and while they talk about two patents in their press release, they don't specify which ones -- and a search was unsuccessful.
Then Ekahau Inc. announced an upgrade to its flagship RTLS solution, which is based on Ekahau Positioning Engine which is also patented by 7,293,008. The short story is that if you have several access points in your office, the office will be able to tell you where you are within your office.
Finally, Crosscheck Networks released a cloud-simulation program; basically, it allows you to see how your system will behave when under stress, simulating a large number of users using it at the same time. Their patent is 7,328,403.
It all sounds exciting on paper: companies are innovating, and are patenting their discoveries. However, there are two problems here:
- Patents in the context of software development don't help innovation at all
- Most (if not all) of these patents are awarded without merit.
Asankya's patent for example is something that can be defined a "software patent classic": reading the patent, you get more and more the impression that they "invented" packet inspection software based on templates. One has to wonder if they were aware of the many pieces of packet inspection software out there -- some of them free, some of them proprietary -- which do the same thing, and have been for years.
Ekahau's patent is also interesting. They patented a system that allows you to work out where you are in an office with several hotspots. The patent seems to be quite obscure (although the goal of a patent should be clarifying an invention, making it available to others). Hopefully, nobody tells them that patent 5,890,068, filed years before theirs, covers pretty much their ground. And that Google Gears added WiFi Geolocation to their services.
Talking about obscurity, Crosscheck Network's patent wins: "A method comprising characterizing at least a portion of an expression in a stylesheet as evaluatable at a phase wherein the phase is one of a compile phase, a parse phase, or a transformation phase of applying the stylesheet to a document to transform the document in a document transformation appliance;" It's very clear that this is a very necessary invention in order to create a stress-simulation system. Reading the rest of the patent doesn't help very much. If anybody else develops a stress test (and there are several available), they had better watch out.
The cloud is very precious, as it can create black boxes that will fulfil your company's needs. However, the risk is that companies will patent all sorts of obvious "methods" in order to protect their investment.
The cloud has the dangerous potential of turning in a heavy rain of lawsuits that will hinder innovation and will slow down adoption. Think before you patent, and -- more importantly -- before you sue.
