Opsware patent challenged
Yesterday, the Public Patent Foundation announced that they are challenging patent # 7,124,289 issued to Opsware in 2006:
The challenged Opsware patent claims methods for automatically configuring or installing software on a plurality of computing devices having different respective sets of software and/or configurations of operating parameters.
In November 2006, Opsware announced :
The patent -- number 7,124,289 -- covers the cornerstone of Opsware's technology, the ability to automate the management of servers and network devices across a data center through model-based control. This innovation allows models of granular configuration information about servers or networks to be stored as records in a database and, as changes are made to any aspect of a systems configuration model, to push those changes to any relevant servers or network devices. This technique supports automation for even extremely large and global datacenters, and it provides a fast, efficient and cost-saving approach to ensuring consistency and compliance.
It's not clear why this patent is challenged now. The patent was filed on October 31st 2000, but the argument made by pubpat is that various open source project existed before the filling date.
Technorati Tags: bcfg2, cfengine, datacenter management, patent
Re: Opsware patent challenged
It got challenged now because Opsware's CEO made the mistake of making reference to it in a press release recently. PubPat wouldn't have even thought twice about it otherwise, but now it makes for a good 'publicity' case. I'm not a big fan of software patents and all they entail, but in looking at this one there's nothing that appears any more egregious than 90% of the other software patents out there.