It seems like everyone is talking about Barracuda, Trend Micro, ClamAV, and what it has to do with open-source. The whole issue is made complicated mostly because of a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) that the two companies have been throwing at each other. In fact, it is getting hard to tell who is right and who is wrong through all the FUD.

At the bottom of all this is Trend Micro’s patent on an implementation of anti-virus software on servers. The details of this are not important, but for anyone who is curious, here is what Ars Technica says about the patent:

“Trend Micro claims that its US Patent 5,623,600 broadly covers the concept of server-based antivirus software on FTP and SMTP gateways.”

Trend Micro has already sued both Symantec and McAfee over allegedly infringing on this patent. Both companies choose to settle out of court, rather than fight an expensive court case. When Trend Micro sued Barracuda, an enterprise-level security company that uses the open-source anti-virus software ClamAV in their products, however, Barracuda decided to fight the case, rather than settle with Trend Micro.

Although things could change a lot between now and when the case is decided, Ars Technica (look for the heading “The search for prior art”) points out that Barracuda has fairly convincing evidence that this implementation of anti-virus software was used before Trend Micro got their patent.

Beyond this, the FUD starts. Barracuda frames this case as an attack on open-source and ClamAV and is attempting to gather support from FOSS supporters and even asking for people to contribute examples of prior art. Trend Micro denies that this case has anything to do with open-source or ClamAV, saying that they are simply protecting their patent and what anti-virus software is being used is not important. At the same time, however, Trend Micro refused to comment on their views on enforcing this patent on non-commercial use or on other open-source projects, according to Linux.com.

Whether or not this case is an attack on open-source, it seems to be a case of patent trolling and if Trend Micro’s patent is considered invalid, it would set a good precedent.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Legal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.