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Apple 'Safe Deposit Box' Patent Revealed Ahead of Mac OS X Lion
- idonthack 16y agoso they've patented a password-protected network filesystem? how did they miss the prior art on THAT one?
- epistasis 16y agoIf you read the post, it doesn't appear that they've patented anything like that. Just because something is used in an invention doesn't mean that component is now part of the patent; for example if somebody uses a gear in their patented design, it's OK for others to use gears.
- pyre 16y agoAfter Apple's patent lawyers got a description from their engineers, I'm sure they found a way to word it so that having customers that breath oxygen is part of the technology, and patentable.
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- pedalpete 16y agoCould you please elaborate on what you see as being patented then? I agree a patent on a gear does not allow others to use the same gear, but said gear would need to have a uniquely defining quality which differentiates it from the other gears already in existence.
- epistasis 16y agoI'm not going to go trawling through patents (I'm superstitious), but based on only the figures in the linked article, there's at least a password protected file-system and the interface for accessing it. And going on the text, there's going to be something about the security implementation as well that's in the patent. This sounds very similar to DropBox, but this is just a high-level description. It's extremely unlikely that they could describe their system in sufficient detail without distinguishing it from DropBox in some way. There's a tendency to hear the title of a patent and think that it covers all systems that could possibly be described by that particular title. This is not the case! Also, there's a tendency to hear about a patent and think that because your system does something similar, it would be infringing against a patent, but that also is not necessarily the case. The patent system can be abused horribly, but not every instance of a patent is an instance of abuse, and each patent should be evaluated on its own merits rather than the abuses of others.
- psykotic 16y ago> Also, there's a tendency to hear about a patent and think that because your system does something similar, it would be infringing against a patent, but that also is not necessarily the case. Right. You can often dodge patent claims by doing just one little thing in a different way. When you see a very specific claim, it means the patent lawyer was forced to write it that way by the examiner. A patent application starts out as generic as possible and becomes increasingly specific in response to push-back. Of course, non-infringement is no guarantee against getting dragged into a costly legal battle.
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- mbreese 16y agoThey didn't apply for a patent on that (and this is just an application)... From my reading of the claims, it looks like they are applying for a patent for: An animated "safe deposit" box icon that you can drag a file onto, and it will then be encrypted, and stored in a secondary location (such as the cloud). They were pretty specific about the animated icon too... (claims 1-4) Actual patent application (20110040980): http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220110040980%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20110040980&RS=DN/20110040980 http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
- _delirium 16y agoIn theory, Claim #1 is a standalone claim (though it might only in practice be upheld in conjunction with later claims), and that one is pretty broad. Basically claims to patent the idea of dragging files to an icon, which results in the files being copied elsewhere. Not even specifically backup-related; the description appears to be of any network filesystem that supports GUI drag-and-drop.
- DTrejo 16y agoHaving originated a patent doesn't sound so impressive now.
- mryall 16y agoThis is a really interesting way to sell cloud-based storage. My parents use Dropbox for synchronisation of files on multiple computers, but they don't really understand how it acts as a backup system too. Pitching cloud storage as a safety deposit box clearly spells out the benefit to people. On a related note, Mac OS X can already create password-protected encrypted disk images with a few clicks in Disk Utility. These are great for creating a "safety deposit box" yourself on an existing system.
- joebananas 16y ago> but they don't really understand how it acts as a backup system too. Maybe your parents are just more sophisticated than you and know the difference between redundancy and backups.
- kgermino 16y agoDropbox also lets you go back and open past versions of all your files, meaning that anything in your Dropbox is effectively backed up as well.
- wizard_2 16y agoVersioned storage isn't a backup, but it is quite helpful. Additionally Amazon S3 does redundant storage ( http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#protecting http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#protecting ) but in the end you're relying on a single service with a single account.
- kgermino 16y agoI still say Dropbox provides a legitimate backup, consider the features my free Dropbox account offers: (1) Redundancy - All files in your Dropbox are saved on every computer and stored on Dropbox's servers (2) Accessibility - Files in the Dropbox can be reached from any computer with internet access via a browser and downloaded (3) Versioned Storage - Every saved version of every file in the Dropbox going back thirty (30) days is available online (4) Deletion Protection - Every file in the Dropbox is available online and can be restored, even after the file is deleted from the computer and removed from the dropbox I may be missing something, but what exactly does a "true" backup system do that Dropbox doesn't?
- code_duck 16y agoHow does this differ from the iDisk system? Just asking, I'm relatively new to Macs and I see that in Finder under Devices but have never used it. Also, how does iDisk differ from DropBox?
- pyre 16y agoIIRC, iDisk was just an easy way to mount the storage on your .Mac account (or whatever they are calling it nowadays). There was no auto-sync, so it was basically a network mounted filesystem (I doubt the system's backend was distributed, so I'm not going to call it a 'cloud-based' mounted filesystem).
- dchest 16y agoActually, there's a full sync option in MobileMe preferences.
- tastybites 16y agoWhat could possibly go wrong.
- alexobenauer 16y ago--Mike Rowe
- bayareaguy 16y agoPrior art? 2009 - http://www.randomwire.com/storing-sensitive-data-in-the-cloud http://www.randomwire.com/storing-sensitive-data-in-the-clou... 2008 - http://firmit.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/truecrypt-virtual-encrypted/ http://firmit.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/truecrypt-virtual-enc...
- masklinn 16y agoStop that, it's very silly: http://news.swpat.org/2010/03/transcript-tridgell-patents/ http://news.swpat.org/2010/03/transcript-tridgell-patents/
- bayareaguy 16y agoCare to elaborate in your own words why you think so? I will be quite peeved if something I have been doing for years with combinations of tools like Dropbox and Truecrypt becomes more difficult or costly to me or my customers due to a patent like this one.
- caf 16y agoBasically, it comes down to: the claims in patents are interpreted very narrowly. If your device/method doesn't exactly match the claim elements of the independent claim(s) in Apple's patent - even one little difference in implementation is enough - then your device/method is not infringing. Don't worry, be happy.
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- dualboot 16y agoI'm just happy they properly called it a "Safe deposit box." It annoys the crap out of me when people call it a "Safety deposit box"