Yet more world+dog patent suits, this time over encryption
Apple, Dell, HP, Toshiba, etcetera
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A hitherto little-known company called Maz Technologies has taken aim at seven major vendors, filing lawsuits claiming that they infringe its security patents.
Maz Technologies first popped its head over the patent parapet in 2002, when it sued a company called PC Dynamics over a security patent, and in 2008 it settled a suit with Microsoft. PC Dynamics had tried to have patent 6,185,681 invalidated, but seems to have failed, since there is now a 2006-dated re-examination certificate attached to it.
Maz now seems to be taking the wide view, filing against Apple, Dell, HP, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Lenovo, and BlackBerry (under its former name, Research in Motion).
The ‘681 patent, “Method Of Transparent Encryption And Decryption For An Electronic Document Management System” is at issue in most of the cases, with Maz Technologies asserting that fingerprint scanners infringe the patent. Here’s a list (documents linked at Scribd):
Dell Data Protection Encryption
Toshiba’s EasyGuard software and fingerprint readers – US patent 8,359,476
The Blackberry Enterprise Solution
Fujitsu’s PalmSecure and PalmEntry
Lenovo’s ThinkVantage
Apple gets to be different. Its alleged infringement is against US patent 7,096,358, a patent covering an “Encrypting file system”.
The ‘681 patent covers turning the “close”, “save” or “save as” commands into an “event”, and using that event to trigger file encryption, while the ‘476 patent covers authentication apparatus – the fingerprint scanners in Maz Technologies’ sights. ®
COMMENTS
Fuck them. Fuck every single patent troll. With something pointy; plugged into the mains; and bred from a particularly convoluted cactus.
EDIT: (because I can): Also; apply it with a cordless hammer drill. And cover everything with tabasco.
Re: Not a Troll
Emacs has had crypt mode, with automatic en/de-crypting of files on read and write, since 1988 at the latest. How does it do it? It adds a software module (crypt.el) to an electronic document management system (Emacs) which traps file i/o events (load, save) and applies crypto.
General encryption of *any* (non-setuid) Unix program by using LD_PRELOAD to hook into the file i/o at the system library level has been around since well before 1998.
And surely IBM have been hooking crypto into file i/o since the year dot?
Re: Not a Troll
"This would have been cutting edge stuff in those days"
No it wasn't ...
"and it is quite clever"
No it isn't ...
"Save your contempt for those that have ripped off the idea and are selling it as their own."
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