Microsoft patents portable applications

This is ridiculous!

Microsoft will start suing people left right and center!

Can someone give me an example of an application that "is only executed from the flash drive but does not alter the host computer?"

because to me it appears that this is what all portable applications are about.

and I was hoping we will soon have portable OS's........

 

U.S. patent system needs a rewrite from scratch. You know, no prior art needs to be investigated before you issue a patent to someone, not after (which makes others incur the costs of patent invalidation). Plus, SW patents - broken by design, never should be allowed.

 

Does anyone know if MS has patented lungs yet, or human reproductive systems?

How this patent could have been issued is beyond me. Absolutely ridiculous.

 

Yeah, the US Patent Office is a joke. They give patents out for anything, don't spend time investigating, and figure they'll let the lawyers worry about it afterwards. Jefferson was right.

 

I guess that means when you're with a girl you need to show your cond... Microsoft approval badge!

 

Drive Snapshot's snapshot.exe which can be downloaded here... hxxp://www.drivesnapshot.de/download/snapshot.exe

 

There are zillions of apps that can be run from removable media and don't alter the OS in any way. As an example on how absurd this "patent" is - you can run pretty much any DOS application from a floppy and it "does not alter the host computer" in way or form, and that "application is bound to the portable storage device" (floppy). Back to the '80s, everything was pretty much portable.

This patent is clearly completely invalid, yet it's been issued by USPTO - example of sheer incompetence and broken legislation.

 

Drive Snapshot savest its settings into registry so it alters the host computer. But yes there are so many apps which don't alter the host.
This patent sounds like Geswall (configured) for usb ... nothing new.

 

My point was that all portable applications are by definition designed to run from an external device like a usb flash drive and are designed not to alter or modify the host machine in any way.

Taking the example of drive snapshot, the patent that was granted to MS is so broad that MS can very well go to Drive snapshot people and tell them that every time a user executes drive snapshot from a flash drive, they will have to pay royalty to MS!

In fact, every time a user uses any bootable recovery software through a flash drive or any portable application, they are required to pay a fee to Microsoft.

I do not see this patent as applicable. I am sure it will be struck down or declared invalid soon.

 

@Raza0007,

Thanks for the explanation, I now understand your concern.

Hope Microsoft does not take advantage of this patent which will have grave consequences on all portable applications.

 

You can't take advantage of such patents against pretty much any signaficant competitor; will only result in the patent getting declared invalid by the court in the end. The only ones who profit from this are USPTO (you pay for patents registration) plus (and mainly) the lawyers involved. Other than that, similar patents serve no useful purpose whatsoever, let alone stimilate innovation (which used to be the original idea behind patents back then).

 

More to the point, what was behind Microsoft applying for this patent? Given their track record, they must have something in mind to apply this patent to.

 

How can they patent such a thing? I haven't looked but is Windows itself patented? I thought these things might be copyrighted but patented?

 

There are reasons to build up a patent warchest. For example, some say that a reason that Apple is suing HTC is because HTC doesn't have enough patents to countersue Apple. From Is Apple launching a patent war?:

 

Yeah, software is covered by copyright for the more sane parts of the world (like, EU). While you technically can patent software there ( the EPO will grant the patent), there's no way you could enforce that patent legally before courts, so... kinda pointless at the moment. So, occasionally you go, pay big money to lobbists and they try to push the software patents through the European Commission/Parliament. Fortunately, they've failed every time they tried so far.

Then, there's the other issue here, as already said above. "No prior art" test is something that's actively investigated before you actually get the patent in continental legal systems. It works the other way round in "common law" systems. They'll grant the patent for pretty much anything (especially when the applications are heavily obfuscated by legal crap and intentional "technobabble") and then - if someone dislikes the patent - they need to get that invalidated/declared void. Which is great for lawyers involved, but definitely no so great for innovation.

Finally, collecting patents for obviously, long-time known and used stuff is a great way for "racketeering" and actually hindering the competition (exactly the opposite of what patents were supposed to be used for originally).

 

Since we're discussing patents...Amazon.com's 1-Click patent confirmed following re-exam

 

Software Patent

Haven't there been portable apps pre DOS?
Many anti-malware and diagnostic solutions utilize portable applications. Wonder how this will affect them?

 

They'll probably claim that a Linux live CD violates the patent

 

When a system has failed and nobody wants to see it then we have results like Lehman Brothers. The american patents system has also failed and faces a dead-end. It's just that many don't want to see it yet.

 

Hey, i was thinking about patenting fresh air, except it's not. What with all that nasty illegal poisenous stuff they spray us with almost every day in Chemtrails

 

Perhaps they may want to take out a patent for crac*.

http://www.google.com.au/search?client=opera&rls=en&q='step+on+a+crack,+break+your+mother's+back'&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

 

Most portable apps create a directory in the %appdata%\Temp folder with preferences. That is "altering" the host OS since it is adding files and folders that werent there before.