This page is a collection of statements and findings around prior art on the
patent 5,764,992
as disclosed by Apple Inc.:
Method
and apparatus for automatic software replacement
What is the goal of this page?
Apple Inc. participates in the Web Application Working Group. In application
of the exclusion rights given by the W3C Patent Policy, Apple excluded Patent
Nr. 5,764,992 from its Royalty Free commitment given to participate in the
Working Group. The exclusion triggered a Patent Advisory Group (PAG). The PAG
is using this page to collect prior art and to collect information on how the
widget updates specification circumvent the excluded patent.
Does Apple participate in the PAG?
Apple Inc. is a necessary Participant in the Patent Advisory Group along
with all AC Reps of all the Participants of the Web Applications Working Group.
While the W3C Patent Policy has the goal to ensure that W3C Specifications are
implementable on a Royalty Free basis, it also protects valuable assets of W3C
Members participating in Specification work by allowing them to opt out of the
RF commitments.
Does Work on the Widget Updates Specification have to stop now?
No. The work on the Widget Updates Specification can continue in parallel to
the Patent Advisory Group. Nevertheless, Widget Updates will not be able to
enter the status of Proposed Recommendation
as long as the PAG is
running.
Hints to Prior Art received from the call for prior art
- 1978: Self updating firmware in Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) in industrial controls
- 1980: C64 programmer used this technic to REPLACE running code and complete program parts with a new implementation.
- 1982: The MACSYMA computer algebra program at MIT on PDP-10
- 1988: The TC 500 system
- 1989: The CERN OPAL System prior to the Web
it is unclear whether HEAD requests were already there - 1991: The HTTP Protocol and Browsers, but
- 1994: IRIX rqsall, present in IRIX 5.3 of 1994, similar to the linux packaging
- 1994: The HotJava Browser
- 1994: Automated sequence analysis system for biological DNA and protein sequences
- Suggestion to find HTML pages with scripting prior to 1995
Prior art identified in the patent:
- 5,019,963: Data
processing network with upgrading of files
IBM
Expired: March 21, 2008
- Kirouac 5,155,847: Method
and apparatus for updating software at remote locations
Minicom Data Corporation
Expired: August 8, 2008
invoked by the Examiner in his initial rejection of the patent
- 5,247,683: System
and method for installing software and updating configuration files
IBM
Expires: June 19, 2011
- Halliwell, 5,473,772: Automatic
update of static and dynamic files at a remote network node in response to
calls issued by or for application programs
IBM
Expires: September 2, 2013
invoked by the Examiner in his initial rejection of the patent
- 5,564,051: Automatic
update of static and dynamic files at a remote network node in response to
calls issued by or for application programs
IBM
Expires: June 7, 2015
- 5,608,901: Method
and system for improving the contiguity of sectors of a file
Microsoft
Expires: September 1, 2014
Claim 1:
- Claim 1 talks about a current version in memory, that means that only if
the widget updates itself, the patent is violated. If the update is done by
an external program or another widget, the patent wouldn't be touched.
General ideas for prior art:
- The linux packaging system from 1992
- Virus software updating itself
- W95/Babylonia
Dec 1999 is too late for prior art. Another article tells
that self-updating viruses started in 2000
- Article
by Vesselin Bontchev with the idea of a viral software against
viruses that would update itself. Date to be determined.
- sweon.net
(PDF) Great history of virus programming. Already in 1983, they showed
a virus being able to embed itself (thus modifying) another program.
- Worms updating themselves, see the timeline
of computer viruses and worms in Wikipedia
- Anti-virus software updating the list of recognized viruses
- CMU Andrew system: An article
reported that it was updating software from a server side.
- TrapMan, a Windows
debugging tool, see also article from 1995 may be
relevant wrt self-modifying code that allows only one instance of itself to
run at any one time.
The Widgets Updates Patent Advisory Group is chartered to study issues and propose
solutions related to a patent
disclosure from Apple, Inc., concerning the Widgets 1.0: Updates Working
Draft.
PAG -Chair is Rigo Wenning
(W3C). The W3C Staff Contacts for the Widgets Updates PAG are Doug Schepers and Michael(tm) Smith.