М-да. Просмотрел патент и внимательно почитал собственно claim'ы -- с дуба они рухнули, с дуба. Это ж надо было выписать собственно потенциально рассматриваемое судом (claims) об "одном или двух" серверах раздачи, а на картинках и в словесном описании оперировать "множественными".Торрентфрикам написал такой комментарий:
I've read the claim 1 of US patent 7,301,944: a system employing "a distribution server" which is configured "to deliver a single (sic!) copy" is described -- and I find it lacking at least the very principal feature of P2P file tranfer protocols and implementations: a system with or without a centralized media file database and a centralized request processing computing device, with a priori more than "first or second distribution servers" which are further tightly coupled to "clients" and thus able to serve fragments of incomplete downloads; there's also not a sign of disclosing the entity we know as torrent hash file (claim 2 fails to even come close to describing a separate metafile); load balancing is also entirely different than what's described.
They are picturing a very small server farm geared towards small-scale content delivery with optional codec optimization, multicast, DRM and ads, but not even a decentralized content delivery network, not to say peer-to-peer one. Being somewhat skilled in the art of both designing and writing software (and to some extent in reading patents as an expert), I'd describe this whole affair as an attempt to pull the half-baked limited and obsolete pay-per-play patent onto practically successful competitor's technology which is rather entirely different, even the purpose is rather contrary to where claims 12 and 13 would go.
PS: just in case, a quick analysis of the handwriting used in half of the figures drawn tells that the person who made them was rather weak and possibly egoistic character (e.g. the particular variety of 2's shape is quite noticeable in that regard).
PPS: I publish Linux ISO images as torrents, most (all?) of those including my work :)
Забавно, из пяти отметившихся адвокацев заявителя двое -- просто Гольдштейны, ещё одна -- полячка. Ну раз у них чего-то не хватило "рассмотреть и увидеть" -- то написал и им:
Subject: Regarding "Tranz-Send" complaint
Hello folks,
I thought jews were at least smarter than asserting that age-old
media server farm can be made looking similar enough to a modern
distributed content delivery technology.
In particular, I challenge your professional ability based on
your written statement (item 1 of said complaint) that BitTorrent
software and/or the fundamental technology used therein does
infringe at least claim 1 of US7,301,944.
Any sufficiently skilled in the art, and probably any moderately
educated sane person, could sit and write down the key features
of the technology in question and the patent in question and see
that the patent claims don't describe the technology in question
since the restrictions spelled are specific enough so that P2P
idea clearly has the whole inventive step over '944; and it
doesn't have (or even need) one or more features specifically
described in claim 1.
I've done this homework to considerable extent but it would take
decent people to obtain help, and you didn't make it; lehitraot.
