more on Patent issued for Web caching

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: petri.tuomola () accenture com
Date: October 23, 2006 8:35:37 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] Patent issued for Web caching

Dave

I'm not a particular fan of USPTO, nor do I want to attempt to explain
or defend their decisions to grant patents in general, but I am
wondering whether the situation here is quite as dire as suggested by
Brett Glass.

The patent text mentions in the "Other References" section many (>10)
papers outlining HTTP proxy designs that clearly predate the patent
application (for example, Glassman S: "A caching relay for the World
Wide Web" Computer Networks and Ison Systems, vol. 27, No. 2, Nov. 1994,
p. 165-173) - perhaps a bit unwise if they really attempted to claim a
patent on the use of proxies as a concept.

Also in the section "Related Art", the authors clearly state that the
prior art in the field includes caching proxies:

> One known method is to provide a device (such as a general purpose
> processor operating under software control) which acts as a proxy,
> receiving requests for information from one or more clients, obtaining
> that information from one or more servers, and transmitting that
> information to the clients in place of the servers. When the proxy has
> previously obtained the information from one or more servers, it can
> deliver that information to the client without having to repeat the
> request to the server.

It seems to me that the real "invention" they claim is a proxy that
manages its own mass storage directly (rather than relying on the
operating system/file system to do so). They claim that the use of
system calls by other proxy designs to manipulate the cached data
results in "...several sources of delay, caused primarily by the proxy's
surrendering control of its storage to its local operating system and
local file system".

So - a patent on a proxy that does not rely on a file system to store
its cached objects but manages the mass storage directly instead. Hardly
groundbreaking science worthy of a patent - but at the same time, not
sure how much of a threat that would be to most of the existing proxy
designs out there. Aren't most proxy devices nowadays built on Linux
anyway? :-)

Regards
Petri

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: 20 October 2006 20:04
To: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: [IP] Patent issued for Web caching



Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
Date: October 20, 2006 2:55:14 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: Patent issued for Web caching

Dave:

For IP, if you'd like. A patent has recently issued which appears to
cover any and all forms of caching in a client/server system --
including the World Wide Web.The principal claim is for

"1. A method, including steps of: receiving a set of network objects
in response to a first request to a server from a client; and
maintaining said network objects in a cache memory in a cache engine,
said cache engine connected via a network to the server and the
client, said cache memory including mass storage; wherein said step
of maintaining includes steps of recording said network objects in
said cache memory and retrieving said network objects from said cache
memory, so as to substantially minimizes a time required for
retrieving said network objects from said mass storage".

In short, the patent is broad enough to cover virtually any form of
caching in a client/server situation. The link to the patent at the
USPTO is quite long, so I've run it through TinyURL.com for the
convenience of IP readers. The patent is at

http://tinyurl.com/ym7xq8

Note that the patent issued in September of this year, but was
applied for in 1998. This was long after the CERN HTTP cache, the
DARPA-funded "Harvest project," the NLANR Information Resource
Caching project (IRCache), the release of the first version of Squid,
and the release of the Cisco Cache Engine, so there appears to be
ample prior art. One can only wonder how this patent possibly could
have issued.

--Brett Glass, LARIAT.NET

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