Unless they are able to get an injunction where SNOW cannot be sold to new clients it could backfire as a marketing ploy. If folks feel that SNOW is that close to BMC to have BMC worry and if the price point is lower for SNOW, it could drive more folks in that direction.
From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arslist@ARSLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Rick Cook Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2014 5:06 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Re: BMC sues SNOW ** Most patents these days aren't for new concepts, but slight - sometimes almost imperceptively so - tweaks in the way something is done. We'll see how these come out, but I think the poster who suggested that this was more a marketing ploy than anything might be more on the mark than most. Rick Cook On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 2:01 PM, John Baker <jba...@javasystemsolutions.com <mailto:jba...@javasystemsolutions.com> > wrote: Hello I've reviewed some of the patents and I was amused by what passes for a 'patent'. http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US5978594 This patent is all about agents running on hosts, controlled by a central service. It is described as "novel", but it's not something invented by BMC and is present in many other products. For example, both IBM Websphere and Oracle Weblogic have a concept of a central service (WAS deployment manager, WL admin server), that feeds instructions/configuration to nodes running JVMs. This is not novel - it's common place. http://www.google.com/patents/US6816898 Collecting performance metrics. I can do that in a couple of lines of Python and it's nothing new. A typical large bank will have lots of this stuff, both purchased and home grown, littered on their networks with an "operations team" constantly monitoring it. http://www.google.co.in/patents/US6895586 This one is awful. It sounds like BMC claim to have invented a system of storing data in a hierarchical document using namespaces - you know, what we commonly refer to as XML. There's no intellectual property in designing a schema. http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US7062683 This patent seems to suggest BMC have invented a method of troubleshooting via flowcharts - something I recall doing at school in the mid-80s, and I recall plenty being present in my 6502 Assembler guide. I suspect this and other patent relates to the way in which a BMC product works, but copying the concept is not a crime (Microsoft do not own the concept of a word processor, or sending an email). Indeed, for every concept pinched by a competitor, BMC will have pinched one themselves - such as graphing data to display metrics, which is almost certainly patented by some other company. I think the core problem with many IT patents is they aren't actually 'inventions' but a great way for lawyers to make money. After all, they are hardly going to turn around and tell a BMC senior manager, "I'm sorry mate, but this patent has no value". Real inventions, such as James Dyson's bag-less vacuum cleaner, have real value. These patents seem to tell a competitor more about how the internals of a BMC product works rather than defining an 'invention' of real value. John Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but I can use Google :) _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org <http://www.arslist.org> "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years" _ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" and have been for 20 years_ _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org "Where the Answers Are, and have been for 20 years"
