[NoCat] Acacia Internet Access Redirection

[Jim Thompson]

chris neitzert wrote:
> I've been following this on Bawug, here, and /.
> 
> IANL, yet, I can think of a handful of prior art that could nullify this 
> silly patent.
> 
> yet it appears to me that nocat has them by a month if we go by the date 
> the patent was awarded.

Its likely that they filed a disclousre well before the patent filing 
date, and that this earlier disclosure will be the priority date for the 
purposes of prior art.

In the US, one can wait up to a year after the first public disclosure 
or offer for sale to file a U.S. patent application. The principal 
benefit in waiting is to gain further understanding of the commercial 
viability of the invention before investing in patent protection.

I've gone back through the Smallworks files and I'm pretty sure I've got 
  prior art from 1995.  Smallworks wrote firewalls, and we once 
developed CiscoSecure (a commercial TACACS+ (and RADIUS) server) for 
Cisco.  There are documents about "lock & key".

This, plus the Wayport stuff (dating from 1997 and early 1998.)

I also know that both CAIS and Atcom/Info had significant prior art from 
1997, and possibly earlier.  Cisco owns all of this IP now (it was known 
as BBSM.)

IANAL, this is not legal advice.

Jim

> http://web.archive.org/web/*/nocat.net
> 
> 
> ...
> 
> chris
> 
> Jim Thompson wrote:
> 
>> Jacob S. Barrett wrote:
>>
>>> Today I received an information packet from Acacia Technologies Group 
>>> informing me that I was in volation of their patent on "IAR" [1].  
>>> IAR is a US Patent 6,226,677 [2].  That packet suggest that I must 
>>> license their technology or face legal action.  Has anyone else 
>>> received this same extortion letter?
>>>
>>> The claims the the patent text lead me to believe they don't have 
>>> much to stand on.  If I read the abstract and claim one correctly 
>>> then it doesn't cover a system that doesn't change the destination 
>>> address.  Any solution that uses the IPFW fwd [3] rule would not 
>>> modify the destination address and therefore does not meet claim 1.  
>>> I'm I correct in my logic?
>>>
>>> What are your takes on this matter?
>>>
>>> References:
>>> 1) http://www.acaciatechnologies.com/technology_iar.htm
>>> 2) 
>>> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,226,677.WKU.&OS=PN/6,226,677&RS=PN/6,226,677 
>>>
>>> 3) 
>>> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ipfw&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+4.10-stable&format=html 
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> IANAL, and this isn't legal advice.  If you want a legal opinion (and 
>> such things are good if you're staring down the barrel of an 
>> infringement case, since it could get you out of a "willfull 
>> infringement" case), you should buy one, from a lawyer.
>>
>> All that said,  this is covered elsewhere.  I answered similar 
>> questions on BAWUG yesterday:
>>
>> http://www.mail-archive.com/wireless%40lists.bawug.org/msg06739.html
>>
>> Glenn and Nancy are reporting on same as well:
>>
>> http://wifinetnews.com/archives/004184.html
>>
>> Nigel Ballard has received a letter as well.
>>
>> Jim
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>>