Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll

http://www.securityweek.com/kaspersky-lab-celebrates-15-years-win-against-patent-troll

by techinsidr • 14 years ago

80 26 14 years ago

securityweek.com

jack-r-abbit2• 14 years ago

Awesome. It is refreshing to see companies not only stand up to the trolls but to actually win. We need more of this.

techinsidr2• 14 years ago

Especially a smaller (albeit well-off) company than some of the bigger ones who caved.

tzs• 14 years ago

The story is missing a key detail: HOW did they win in court?

There are a couple of ways a plaintiff can lose. (1) the court finds that the defendant did not do anything that is covered by any of the valid patent claims. (2) the court finds that the patent should not have issued in the first place, due to a problem such as prior art making it not non-obvious, the patentee not being the inventor, and so on.

Knowing this is important because it determines who this case affects those who are not Kaspersky. If Kaspersky won because they simply did not do anything that is covered by the patent, but the patent is valid, then everyone else still has to worry about that patent.

If Kaspersky won because the court found that the patent is invalid, then we can all scratch this patent off our lists of patents we have to worry about.

(And all of this, of course, depends on what happens in the appeals court if the plaintiff appeals).

shepik• 14 years ago

Troll's claims were "dismissed with prejudice", according to Kaspersky's personal blog. So, i suppose, this means that effectively the patent is invalid.

http://eugenekaspersky.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/dec.png

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js...

upd: court order: http://www.scribd.com/doc/98161737/Https-Ecf-txed-Uscourts-g...

http://www.scribd.com/doc/98161154/Https-Ecf-txed-Uscourts-g...

lrs7• 14 years ago

The Order indicates that Kaspersky won summary judgment on noninfringement grounds, not invalidity grounds.

e: Not sure about this, but the Order also suggests that some of the Troll's claims survived summary judgment and are proceeding to trial, so it's not clear to me how complete of a victory this is. I'll check the underlying order (this ruling was on a motion for reconsideration) and the PACER docket and see what I can figure out.

jack-r-abbit2• 14 years ago

From what I understand, if a case is dismissed with prejudice the charges can not be refiled. However, I am not sure if that also means the Plaintiff can not appeal.

lrs7• 14 years ago

Plaintiff can definitely appeal a dismissal with prejudice. In fact, Plaintiff would probably have more trouble appealing a dismissal without prejudice, since the implication in a dismissal without prejudice is that Plaintiff can refile.

huhtenberg• 14 years ago

Kaspersky is undoubtedly one of most interesting companies in the antivirus space, if not the one. They do a lot of research and they push things forward instead of just scaremongering their userbase into buying annual subscriptions to a bloatware like Symantec does.

That being said, they do ship some really buggy stuff that is an absolute pain to deal with. For a couple of years I had to deal with support of a networking application and every time a new type of bug report cropped up, the first question was "do you have Kaspersky installed" inevitably followed by "yes, we do." I just can't tell how many men-hours were sunk into chasing problems that were ultimately created by bugs in their resident antivirus shields. It was few years ago, perhaps things have changed for the better.

Natsu3• 14 years ago

Their competitor, Symantec, just bluescreened a lot of corporate XP machines the other week, so it doesn't take much for Kaspersky to look good in comparison.

cantrevealname• 14 years ago

They do a lot of research and they push things forward

Indeed, Kaspersky is superb. And if you're in the US, I have another reason to recommend Kaspersky: It is most unlikely that US law enforcement agencies such as the FBI could convince a Russian AV company to whitelist FBI spyware.

Nor will the Russian government cooperate. Can you imagine the Russian government saying to Kaspersky, "Yeah, sure, ignore the FBI's trojan horse, don't flag it".

Of course the Russian government would have leverage to plant its spyware in Russian-made AV. So you would think that buying Russian vs buying American makes no difference. Not so! Think about motivations: If you're an American, the Russian government doesn't care if you cheated on your tax, if you downloaded Hollywood movies, etc.

Buying your security from a different jurisdiction is a way to minimize risk.

vijayr2• 14 years ago

Surely, Kapersky can't be bigger than Microsoft and other companies mentioned in the article? If they can fight it out, why can't the big guys fight it out? If only the big guys took a stance, and fight these trolls, it'll be nice.

lrs7• 14 years ago

It's very expensive. Kaspersky almost certainly paid its lawyers much, much more to take this case through summary judgment and trial prep than Microsoft paid the Troll to go away.

Don't get me wrong, I'm with you. But...it's easy to pontificate on the virtues of taking a principled stand against trolls when you're not responsible to greedy shareholders.

Does anyone know who owns Kaspersky? It would be interesting to note who was on the Board that OK'd the decision to open the company coffers to fund a fight against a patent troll.

krasin• 14 years ago

Unofficially, it's believed that Eugene Kaspersky holds the controlling block of shares.

inetsee• 14 years ago

"It's very expensive."

What I don't understand is why more companies don't band together to share the cost of fighting against a patent troll. The article lists more than a dozen companies being sued by this patent troll. If they banded together their cost would be a fraction of the cost of a solo fight against a patent troll, while the patent troll would have to bear all the cost of proceeding with the suit.

It seems to me that if more companies did this, it would shift the balance of power away from the patent trolls, and make then think twice before proceeding with a lawsuit, especially if their patent is weak.

vijayr2• 14 years ago

It's very expensive

That is exactly why biggies like Microsoft should fight it out, because they have boatload of cash at their disposal. Today they pay one troll. This will set a precedent, and soon they'll end up paying more and more trolls. But, if they fight from the beginning, it might deter other trolls. They should be able to justify the cost to their shareholders. After all, they make wrong acquisitions all the time, they overpay for acquisitions, they pay heavy fines for behaving badly etc. The shareholders are still around, aren't they?

nhebb• 14 years ago

What impact, if any, does this have on the companies, such as Microsoft, that previously settled and agreed to pay the licensing fees? Can they ride the coattails of this success?

orthecreedence2• 14 years ago

That's what I was thinking too. It'd be really easy for them to terminate their agreements with the trolls and start using the technology free again. My guess is that at least some of them will take this course of action.

Kaspersky Lab Defeats Patent Troll

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