back to article Veeam kicks Symantec's ass over unpatentable patents

Veeam has defeated two four-year-old legal challenges from Symantec, initiated before Symantec split from Veritas and its data protection software. Symantec claimed Veeam was infringing Symantec patents back in 2012. The big bad S referred to several patents in its claims: An '086 patent refers to a virtual machine backup …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Swish! Nothin' but net!

    8 of 8 in one fell swoop AND dismissed with prejudice? Now THAT is how to win a court case!

    *Hits the floor LMAO*

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Swish! Nothin' but net!

      Please, please, for the love of $Diety, tell me Symantec had to pay all of Veeam's legal costs.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Swish! Nothin' but net!

        And USPTO paying Symantec's costs. They granted the patents in the first place.

        1. Joe User

          Re: Swish! Nothin' but net!

          Doctor Syntax: And USPTO paying Symantec's costs. They granted the patents in the first place.

          Uh, no. The USPTO is funded by taxpayer dollars. Let Symantec eat the cost of this fiasco. I see no reason why I should subsidize corporate stupidity.

          1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

            Re: Swish! Nothin' but net!

            "I see no reason why I should subsidize corporate stupidity."

            Would you settle for out of the patent examiners' own pockets?

  2. usbac Silver badge

    Patentable?

    If all of these patents were shot down by the USPTO, why in the hell were they issued in the first place?

    It looks like they approve anything applied for, and then wait for the courts to sort them out?

    1. Jeffrey Nonken

      Re: Patentable?

      "If all of these patents were shot down by the USPTO, why in the hell were they issued in the first place?"

      The U.S. patent system is pretty broken right now, starting with the office. They were issued due to said office having collective rectal-cranial inversion.

      Reform desperately needed.

      1. Boothy

        Re: Patentable?

        Court confirms patents "were not patentable"

        Step 1. Patents are resided.

        Step 2. Any existing court cases referencing the same patents are amended to remove those claims (if other patents are still in dispute), or court case is dismissed fully if only resided patents were involved, with any costs automatically going against the organisation that raised the case.

        Step 3. Any members of staff at the Patent Office who were involved in approving the patents, are re-trained, disciplined and/or sacked, as appropriate.

        Step 4. All existing, and any new Patent requests from the same organisation (or any related to them) to have additional scrutiny applied, for a period of time determined by how serious the issue was (e.g. for the next 5 years, and assuming no further stupid requests are made (i.e. if a stupid request is made, the 5 years starts again)).

  3. Swarthy
    WTF?

    The '682 patent covers classifying files as desired or undesired and only including desired files in a backup snapshot
    Didn't attrib +A|-A pretty much do that?

    1. Lennart Sorensen

      No. That was used to tell if it had been backed up yet or not. Every time you changed a file, the A bit got set. When it was backed up, it was cleared. Nothing more than that.

    2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      No

      No, A+/- shows if a file has been backed up or not.

      Other filesystems on other OS-es have support for backup selection attributes (if memory serves me right VMS is one of them), DOS does not.

    3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Alien

      Patents for retards by retards granted by more retards.

      It's also Symantec, one of the prime reasons why Aliens politely decline to contact Earth people.

  4. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Ever since Einstein left...

    Ever since Einstein got out of the Patent business, it's been going downhill.

    1. Dazed and Confused

      Re: Ever since Einstein left...

      > it's been going downhill.

      No, it's not really going downhill it's just that patent space is curved. Or to use the technical term bent.

  5. Detective Emil
    Thumb Up

    Phew!

    I've been breaking most of those with my hacked-up scripts for years.

  6. Martin Taylor 1
    WTF?

    I'm pretty sure I remember ICL George 3 MOP sessions being held up waiting for a file restore back in the 1970s.

  7. PassiveSmoking

    Effing software patents

    The whole concept is stupid, obnoxious and unworkable. Software patents should all just be scrapped.

  8. BitDr

    So this

    cp /var/lib/libvirt/W7VM_001 /mnt/RAID5/VMBackups/

    would violate the 086 patent and this

    cp /mnt/RAID5/VMBackups/W7VM_001.raw.bak /var/lib/libvirt/W7VM_001.raw

    would violate the 558 patent? <sarcasm>Well done USPTO!</sarcasm>

  9. adam payne

    Just like a lot of big businesses do.

    Patent everything even the stupid things as another business is bound to trip over them at some point. Then throw the sue-balls, see if any sue-balls stick and then make money.

    Thankfully this way of operating has bitten Symantec in the butt (this time).

  10. RLWatkins

    Wait... what?

    A patent on backing up to a different physical device? On backing up only important files? Is this some kind of joke? This stuff got past patent examiners? Hell is full and the dead are walking the Earth.

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