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SCO and Two Patent Applications

By Pamela Jones et al.

I told you I'd find out what the current status is of the patent application for "System of Software Code Comparison", listing Darl McBride's then-pal Michael Anderer and some guys from PointServe as inventors. We told you about it back in 2005, back when it was Patent Application 60/502,098.

It expired, but the inventors resurrected it and now it's 10/938,844, Publication Number 20050216898. Back then, we wondered if we'd found Darl's "MIT deep divers" at last, since the patent mentions spectral analysis, which SCO in 2003 claimed to have used to find infringing code in Linux, and the original Specification [PDF] filed showed SCO's logo from page 5 to 25. Duh. It looked like the inventors just attached a SCO presentation. Looking at it, I wondered if SCO used it to raise money back in the early days. As you'll remember, Anderer was helping SCO find money to fund their dream, and in his leaked memo, he mentioned patents and IPx, and you'll see IPx appears in the Specification too.

Alas for those of you rooting for this patent application, it seems there may exist prior art, because the inventors received a non-final rejection notice, mailed on April 4th, rejecting all the claims. The examiner listed four references, patent numbers 6,778,995 , 6,658,626, 6,954,747, and 6,182,067. Non-final means it's technically not quite dead yet in that the inventors can respond, but it's mostly dead.

But SCO has a patent application itself, one Groklaw member rand noticed, Number 20070067381, related to ME INC, I gather. It has reached the "PG-Pub Issue Notification" level. If you want to view the drawings or wish to download the entire transaction history of either application, go to the PAIR web site, type in the captcha words, then type in the application number. Look for the tab at the top of the page that says Image File Wrapper. You can then choose which documents you'd like to view or download. And if you want to see the earlier filings that each claims priority from, the easiest way from there is to just click on the tab that says "Continuity Data".

You might want to read the patent section in Software Freedom Law Center's Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects, which explains IP law in language programmers can understand, if you are one, before doing so or reading on about the mobile devices patent application.

Full post as published by Groklaw on April 13, 2008 (boomark / email).