[lobbying-org] Symantec patent

[James Srinivasan]

>>>> Symantec have been granted a patent on heuristic virus
>>>> scanning.
>>> Network Associates/McAfee have had something they describe as
>>> "advanced heuristics" in their VirusScan product for a good
>>> while (at least a year)
>> That might be nice prior art then... of course we don't know when
>> Symantec filed...
> How long can patent applications take at most anyway?

>From what I remember of IP lectures, several years isn't unheard of.

> Are you sure the patent isn't much more specific than that? Press-
> releases are often awfully misleading. (Being written by and for
> non-technical people.)

The actual patent # seems to be US6357008 (thanks to
http://gb.espacenet.com)
I'm not sure how specific the claims are - anyone care to comment?

James

p.s. Symantec also appear to have some other amusing patents including one
entitled "Automatic recovery of forgotten passwords"