

SSH Communications Security Announces Patent Enforcement Action - zurn
http://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2015/05/15/736243/0/en/SSH-Communications-Security-Announces-Patent-Enforcement-Action.html

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kayfox
So, from the patent it looks like they patented TCP Keepalives which were
documented in section 4.2.3.6 of RFC1122 from 1989...

[http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1122#page-101](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1122#page-101)

Edit:

Reading further, the patent is construed to cover anything IP based.

I also noted that RFC1122 is not referenced anywhere in the patent, despite
extensive references to other RFCs.

Also, is it normal to have patents granted 11 years after filing in Europe? I
know in the US we have changed the laws several times to discourage and
eliminate submarine patents.

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JoshTriplett
"SSH Communications Security announces failure to remain relevant"

Every time an announcement like this comes out, it's almost always for a
company that has utterly failed to thrive by providing a useful product, and
thus decides to descend into litigation against other people's useful products
instead.

~~~
easytiger
from personal experience I can tell you there are no limits to how unfair and
disgusting some people will be if they can make money out of it.

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zurn
[https://www.google.tl/patents/EP2254311B1?cl=en](https://www.google.tl/patents/EP2254311B1?cl=en)

Seems this is just the bog standard keepalive packet to keep NAT port mapping
from expiring.

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api
So all SIP phones, BitTorrent uTP, Skype, and pretty much anything P2P
infringes?

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nine_k
Hopefully SSH itself does not depend on this exact implementation, and can be
updated to use something non-infringing?

~~~
smhenderson
The details in the press release are thin but my impression is this has
nothing to do with SSH other than the fact that the creators of the protocol
are the ones doing the suing.

I was worried by the headline but reading the article this looks like it's
more about going after someone with deep pockets over a trivial patent. My
guess is they are fishing for a quick settlement.

Something to keep an eye on though. Sigh, I miss groklaw.

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tedunangst
> The lawsuit involves a European Patent registered in Germany

Aren't people always saying software patents don't exist in Europe?

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wnevets
no? I've seen people say patents don't exist in china.

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fragmede
They don't. Look at MediaTek. They have the MT6250 which is an amazing chipset
for the price of $2. Unfortunately, they haven't licensed the patents, which
means you can't commercialize a product based on that chipset in the US, where
patent protections _do_ exist.

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bcg1
Kind of puts Sony in an interesting position... their defense against this
could end up being part of precedent that weakens EU software patents... I
haven't researched but based on other "intellectual property" actions in the
past I assume they are pro-patent and have a massive portfolio.

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spacemanmatt
Is there anything that is not abstract about their patent? The Alice ruling
sure makes defending pure software patents harder.

~~~
dsl
Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank has no impact in German courts.

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based2
[http://www.vandyke.com/products/vshell/faq/015.html](http://www.vandyke.com/products/vshell/faq/015.html)

