Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Cloud Hosting : Cloud Storage lawsuit and patents mitchell prust - softlayer

[sailor]

anyone know anything about this?

mitchell prust vs. softlayer? I cant find much information but his patents seem to be pretty broad regarding cloud storage.

anyone??

with everyone looking at cloud deployments currently - this kind of shocked me and I need a lot more info on this.

[Eleven2 Hosting]

Softlayer is just using Mezeo for their cloud setup - so possibly they should be going after the good guys at Mezeo as well?

[sailor]

Originally Posted by Rodney-E2

Softlayer is just using Mezeo for their cloud setup - so possibly they should be going after the good guys at Mezeo as well?

I have no idea - I dont even know if the 2 are related - I cant find anything out about it other than remote storage multiple access (ie cloud storage) and the guy is suing others as well.

hence the post

this could affect a lot of our businesses / future plans so just looking for any tidbits.

[040Hosting]

Just another case where it shows patents are the dead of our economy. Sad. The current patent system just is not sufficient enough. Nowadays companies can be better referred to as patent fabrics instead of producing companies.

[sailor]

I have more information on this. Apparently all the big cloud guys are lining up lawyers on this right now as we speak because it has large licensing issues.

I suspect after learning more that this guy is just after a cut of the cloud market that his patetns apply to.

The question is how much and how much of that will get passed on to users. It could be quite big but it will hinge on how many of the companies want to line up together and jointly defend this and then who will decide what cost to keep pushing for.

Its definately ugly.

Makes me think that this is crazy that you can simply go out and patent an idea - not a prodcut or process.

[UNIXy]

No worries! someone will find another buzz word to imply the same thing. Problem solved!

<sigh>

[JSCL]

I have a feeling this will also involve UK2 along the lines, backing SoftLayer that is, because they and Ditlev seem to be "big" on the whole cloud storage thing.

[eming]

Originally Posted by BuzzServers-J

I have a feeling this will also involve UK2 along the lines, backing SoftLayer that is, because they and Ditlev seem to be "big" on the whole cloud storage thing.

Yeah, I am very big on the whole cloud thing

And we do love working with Softlayer. I wouldn't say we are "backing" them though, if anything it is the other way around

However our cloud setup is actually not setup in Softlayer, not based on Mezeo and I've never heard of "mitchell prust vs. softlayer"


D

[sailor]

Originally Posted by eming

Yeah, I am very big on the whole cloud thing

And we do love working with Softlayer. I wouldn't say we are "backing" them though, if anything it is the other way around

However our cloud setup is actually not setup in Softlayer, not based on Mezeo and I've never heard of "mitchell prust vs. softlayer"


D

you probably will - its not just around mezeo or softlayer. its a patent on the whole idea of multi access from the web to clustered cloud storage. I would suggest you guys start checking it out.

[eming]

Cloud hosting is a very small of ours (and Softlayers) revenue. I would think the guys who may have a shot at a patent would go after Amazon's $160-180M of pure cloud revenue first
Or give rackspace a go!

After they've done that we will see...


D

[Machen Mathews]

Originally Posted by eming

Cloud hosting is a very small of ours (and Softlayers) revenue. I would think the guys who may have a shot at a patent would go after Amazon's $160-180M of pure cloud revenue first
Or give rackspace a go!

After they've done that we will see...


D

Beautifully spoken : - )
This will be a long interesting journey when the ball actually starts rolling.

[eComNow]

Just with a quick browse through the WIPO database, the international clams for the patent are owned by Wam!Net, Inc - purchased by Savvis Inc in 2003.

Patents in the US are filed by his own name, so it seems that he is suing only US based companies Apple Inc and Softlayer. It will be hard to sue a European cloud hosts with US patents - or even impossible.

For Savvis to sue some company in EU - would be interesting to see. Normally the money you can get out of court case in EU is very limited compared to cases in US and substantial losses has to be proved explicitly. So, I have my doubts about court cases in Europe.

[network82]

I remember Wam!Net, one of the early commercial p2p services.

[dazmanultra]

What does the actual patent cover?

[eComNow]

The international patents cover mainly remote storage solutions that are fully integrated with an operating system ie. Apple iDisk could maybe possibly (?) be seen as such.

Don't know enough of the US patents to comment on them - but along these lines I would assume.


The main international patent claim seems to be:

"Access to the virtual storage areas is fully integrated with an operating system executing on a client computer such that the user, or software applications executing on the client computer, can seamlessly access the corresponding virtual area using standard file management routines provided by the operating system"

References: PCT/US2001/004356 & PCT/US2001/004352

Further info: http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/index.jsp