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Barracuda Networks Asks For Help Finding Prior Art to Defend ClamAV - Updated 3Xs

By Pamela Jones et al.

We have another Pick Your Brain request. This one comes from Barracuda Networks, the email and web security appliances company, but it's about an attack on ClamAV, the Open Source antivirus product.

Barracuda includes ClamAV in some of its enterprise solutions, although it's a small part of what Barracuda does. And Trend Micro has accused ClamAV of infringing a patent it owns, #5,623,600. It specifically has named Barracuda Spam Firewall, the Barracuda Web Filter, and the Barracuda IM Firewall as infringing. Trend Micro has been trying to get Barracuda to either pay license royalties for including ClamAV or stop using ClamAV in its products.

Barracuda, however, is an Open Invention Network licensee, and it decided to stand up and defend ClamAV against what it views as a bogus claim. Barracuda believes the patent is questionable, at best, and believes there is prior art to be found, so it decided to defend ClamAV on behalf of the community, and it asks for our help in finding prior art. Here's the specific Barracuda request for prior art:

People should look for art dated prior to Trend Micro's filing date of September 26, 1995. The '600 patent is entitled "Virus Detection And Removal Apparatus For Computer Networks." We are interested in all material, including software, code, publications or papers, patents, communications, other media or Web sites that relate to the technology described prior to the filing date.

In particular, this prior art should show antivirus scanning on a firewall or gateway. However, many of the claims do not require virus detection at a gateway. So any material that illustrates virus scanning on a file server is also of interest.

We also believe that a product called MIMESweeper 1.0 from a company called Clearswift, Authentium, or Integralis anticipates several claims of the '600 patent. We have yet to locate a copy of this product and would appreciate anyone who has a copy sending it our way.

Litigation has begun, as I'll explain in detail in a minute, and there is a complaint filed by Trend Micro at the International Trade Commission, against Barracuda and Panda Software International and Panda Distribution of California, and the ITC decided on December 21st to investigate the complaint.

Here's how Trend Micro describes its patent in the ITC complaint:

To decrease the risk of a virus entering and/or leaving a network, the ‘600 Patent scans for viruses and other undesired software at the gateway of a network. Moreover, because viruses may be embedded in the content (such as, for example, email attachments and other content from the World Wide Web), the ‘600 Patent scans the content.

I know. You are rolling on the floor, gasping for breath because you are laughing so hard that anyone would even try to claim such an obvious thing as blocking viruses at the gateway. What can I tell you? Patents have gone beserk. For any who don't know what blocking at the gateway means, it's just that in the enterprise, you block before anything even reaches the employees' computers, as opposed to each one installing antivirus software individually. Obvious. Obvious. Obvious business method.

But believe it or not, that's what is being claimed as patented. I know. But with patents, what's the use in being surprised or indignant? The whole system has veered so far from true North that the best response at this point is to find prior art and knock them down one by one until the message is received that attacking FOSS with patents is counterproductive.

Full post as published by Groklaw on January 29, 2008 (boomark / email).