[Mimedefang] Trend Micro patent idiocy - and so it begins
Nels Lindquist
nlindq at maei.ca
Wed Jan 30 13:16:31 EST 2008
Hi, folks.
I figured this might be of interest to the community:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080125135544713
The short of it is that Trend Micro is suing Barracuda Networks because
of their inclusion of ClamAV, claiming infringement of their patent on
virus scanning at the firewall or gateway level. The patent was
discussed on this list in 2005 in a thread starting here:
thttp://lists.roaringpenguin.com/pipermail/mimedefang/2005-May/026938.html
Obviously they're going after Barracuda instead of ClamAV directly
because the former actually has money. Whatever your opinion of
Barracuda's products or corporate practices, they've decided to defend
against the claim in court, and they're on the side of open source in
this case.
They're asking the community for possible prior art, specifically
looking for a copy of MIMESweeper.
David, I seem to recall from the early days of MIMEDefang that you had
originally wanted to call it MIMESweeper but changed it because of that
other package. Does that sound familiar? Don't suppose you've still
got a copy of that kicking around somewhere, eh?
Anyway, if they're starting to go after commercial entities which use
open source in this way, CanIt might get some notice before long. :-(
Maybe we can do something now to help prevent that eventuality.
Nels Lindquist
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