Microsoft bars GNU software from interoperating with CIFS

Licencsing Terms
Patent Claims
Annotated Links
Questions, Things To Do, How you can Help

Licencsing Terms

excerpted from (MS CIFS License Agreement 2002/03/28):: 1.4. "IPR Impairing License" shall mean the GNU General Public License, the GNU Lesser/Library General Public License, and any license that requires in any instance that other software distributed with software subject to such license (a) be disclosed and distributed in source code form; (b) be licensed for purposes of making derivative works; or (c) be redistributable at no charge.
1.2 "Company Implementation" shall mean only those portions of the software developed by Company that implement CIFS for use on Non-Microsoft Platforms.
1.6 "Necessary Claims" shall mean those claims of a patent or patent application, including without limitation, United States Patents Nos. 5,265,261 and 5,437,013, which (a) are owned, controlled or sublicenseable by Microsoft without payment of a fee to an unaffiliated third party; and (b) are necessarily infringed by implementing the CIFS communication protocol as set forth in the Technical Reference, wherein a claim is necessarily infringed only when there are no technically reasonable alternatives to such infringement.
3.3 IPR Impairing License Restrictions. For reasons, including without limitation, because (i) Company does not have the right to sublicense its rights to the Necessary Claims and (ii) Company's license rights hereunder to Microsoft's intellectual property are limited in scope, Company shall not distribute any Company Implementation in any manner that would subject such Company Implementation to the terms of an IPR Impairing License.

Patent Claims

US 5265261:

A computer implemented method in a computer system for transmitting data from a server computer to a consumer computer connected by a virtual circuit, the consumer computer having an application program requesting a read from the server computer, having a redirector, and having a transport, the application program having access to a data buffer allocated by the application program, comprising the steps of: allocating and initializing a receive network control block for directing the transport to store the next data it receives directly in the data buffer; transmitting from the redirector to the transport a read request to read data from the server and said receive network control block for directing the transport to store the read data directly in the data buffer, the read request indicating that the read data should be transmitted without a header; in response to the step of transmitting, sending the read request from the transport to the server computer; examining and recognizing that the read request indicates that the read data should be transmitted without a header; storing the read data in a data block without the header; transferring the data block from the server computer to the transport in response to the step of sending the read request; and in response to the read request and the receive network control block and in response to the step of transferring, storing the data block directly from the transport into the data buffer.
The method of claim 1 that includes the step of ensuring that no requests to transmit data on the virtual circuit are pending before the read request is transmitted.
The method of claim 1, including the steps of: locking the data buffer before transmitting the read request to ensure that the data buffer remains accessible until the read request is satisfied; and unlocking the data buffer after the read data has been stored in the data buffer.
...

US 5437013:

A computer implemented method in a computer system for transferring data on a network from a first computer to a second computer connected by a virtual circuit, the second computer having an application program, a transport implementing network communications and a redirector implementing a system message block protocol, the application program having access to a data buffer, the method comprising the steps of: under control of the redirector, initializing a network control block; and directing the transport of the second computer to store the data that it receives next directly in the data buffer pointed to by the network control block instead of a system message block buffer in the redirector; under control of a transport of the first computer, transferring the data without a system message block header containing information about the data from the first computer over the virtual circuit to the transport of the second computer; and under control of the transport of the second computer, and upon receiving the transferred data, storing the received data directly into the data buffer of the application program.
The method of claim 1, including the step of under control of the redirector, ensuring that no requests to transfer data from the first computer to the second computer are pending so that data without a system message block header can be transferred from the first computer to the second computer.
...

EP 0438571:

A method of locally catching data of a file at a remote terminal, the file being stored at the file server, comprising the steps of:
when the remote terminal initially requests to open the file, requesting that the file server open the file; and retrieving data from the file server to the remote terminal;
updating the retrieved data at the remote terminal without updating data of the file at the file server;
when the remote terminal request to close the opened file and when no other remote terminal has requested the file server to open the file, maintaining the retrieved data of the file at the remote terminal without requesting the file server to close the file and without sending the updated file to the server;
when the remote terminal requests to re-open the closed file and when no other remote terminal has requested the file server to open the file since the remote terminal requested to close the opened file, using the maintained data without requesting the file server to open the file and without retrieving the data of the file from the file server whereby so long as no other remote terminal has requested the file server to open the file all requests by the remote terminal to close and then open the file after the initial request to the file server to open the file are handled locally at the remote terminal even though the retrieved data may have been updated at the remote terminal.
The method of claim 1 wherein the file is a batch file with multiple commands and the remote terminal locally processes the commands so long as no other remote terminal had requests to open the file.
The method of claim 2 wherein before locally processing a command, the remote terminal requests to close the opened file and after processing the command, the remote terminal requests to re-open the file.

Annotated Links

(MS CIFS License Agreement 2002/03/28)

The original on Microsoft's website. see also local copy

Advogato Article

quotes Microsoft's licensing terms.

Pseudo Patent-Free Microsoft Standard

discussion based on the Advogato article and patent database browsing

MS-Patentlizenz: Keine GNU-Softare für MS-CIFS

simila discussion in German

J. Halbersztadt: CIFS patent situation in Europe

The two US patents do not have EP (european) counterparts, but EP 0438571 could be used as a weapon for a similar purpose.

Bericht von D. Riek

Erste Recherchen: noch nichts beim EPA gefunden

David Marus: Softwarepatente - Pat. 5,265,261 = FTP?

Erste Recherchen: noch nichts beim EPA gefunden

Microsoft und die GPL: Freiheit die ich meine

Heise report, see also discussions

Softwarepatente - Pat. 5,265,261 = FTP?
DARUM sind Monopole schlecht
Microsofts Strategie gegen alle "Mitbewerber"

(Steve Ballmer: Kein Tänzchen an der Leine)

Heise report about Steve Ballmer's talk at CeBit. At a speech event together with chancellor Schroeder, Ballmer says that Microsoft owns lots of patents which cover its new DotNet standard and that it aims to use them to prevent opensource implementations of DotNet. The key phrases read, in translation:

Responding to questions about the opening-up of the .NET framework, Ballmer announced that there would certainly be a "Common Language Runtime Implementation" for Unix, but then explained that this development would be limited to a subset, which was "intended only for academic use". Ballmer rejected speculations about support for free .NET implementationens such as Mono: "We have invested so many millions in .NET, we have so many patents on .NET, which we want to cultivate."

Microsoft and Patents

Microsoft Corporation grew large and successful without patents, relying instead on copyright. In 1991 , Bill Gates warned that software patents could lead the software industry to a standstill but could also be very useful for defending monopoly positions. At the USPTO hearings of 1994, Microsoft was the only software company that argued in favor of software patentability. Microsoft has been involved in promoting software patentability in Europe. Simultaneously Microsoft's has invested ample ressources into a campaign to dissuade governments and corporations from using free operating system. Pointing out the insecurity caused to Free Software by patents and contributing to this insecurity by occasional threats has become an important part of the campaign. Microsoft appears to be a favorite victim of patent attacks. In June 2003, Microsoft hired formar IBM patent strategist Marshall Phelps, the father of the "IBM tax", to embark on an aggressive rent-extraction program. Phelps also announced to step up efforts to campaign for software patentability in Europe. Much of this campaigning appears to have been done indirectly by Microsoft partners.

Questions, Things To Do, How you can Help

Research the Patent Situation in Europe!

It seems that the same stuff might be patented at the EPO under somewhat different headings

Find out more about CIFS etc

In what way is it a product of "extending and embracing" previous standards?

How important is CIFS? What is its relation to .NET and other Microsoft concepts?

What parts of it are covered by patents?

Where in CIFS is the core of the patented teaching found? i.e. which parts would still be covered if after an invalidity litigation the claim scope was narrowed down and only a few subclaims were left?

What would a patent-unencumbered variant or alternative to CIFS have to look like? OpenAFS? CODA? Modified CIFS?

It is very likely that most of the claims of the MS patents would not stand an invalidity litigation test and that what is left over consists of methods which would not need to be used, if it were not for that Microsoft incorporated them into its CIFS specification. An effort similar to PNG vs GIF may need to be undertaken and effectively propagated. MSOS (Windows) clients for this CIFS alternative also need to be written. Companies like IBM should play a leading role in this, because they have the strength needed to litigate and to propagate standards in the commercial environment.

Study the feasibility of this kind of project!

How does competition law come in here?

Patent lawyers will love to demonstrate that this case can be solved by applying competition law. If they do puruse that course, see to it that we get some really useful legal precedents that let interoperability considerations override patents, and not just an adhoc solution.


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