Microsoft patents lawful intercept on Skype (opens in new tab)

C'mon, you don't honestly believe in 2012 that a conversation held over public networks using free software that embeds itself in every browser on your machine, watches your searches, automatically talks to the mothership every night, and keeps real-time track of your contacts, is actually private do you?

How do you think Free got to be worth so much?

I feel the need to state what is probably already obvious to the HN crowd: Microsoft did not invent the idea of lawful interception. It is used in full force for both fixed and mobile networks, and select government agencies can call carriers to get records and do live wire tapping.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_L...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception

Microsoft's premise is that the techniques used for VoIP are different then traditional lawful interception, but I don't think anything described in the patent is non-obvious. Nonetheless, they will probably get it awarded, as more then 50% of patent applications do (forgot where I got the statistic from), and even more when its from large tech corporations that have dedicated in-house patent lawyers filing the patent applications.

When you think about it, the USPTO gets money from awarding patents and collects yearly fees through the 20-year life of a patent, and the army of patent examiners they have on staff do not come cheap (starting salaries range from 52-79k), and for the most part they are self-funded and do not rely on U.S. Congress money - so there is every incentive in the system for them to award every patent applied for.

Skype and Microsoft aside - what is there to patent to begin with? They effectively describe mangling the call setup to make the call go through a recording agent. This is obnoxiously trivial.

Someone found a way to bypass the PR dept to let you know that Microsoft's IM networks support lawful intercept (and that company policy supports this).

Extremely important to note: this is a patent application, not a patent. That is to say, this has no legal effect, Microsoft cannot use the patent application to sue anybody, etc. etc. Also, the claims (which are the heart of any granted patent) are likely to change before this gets issued as an enforceable patent.

standard disclaimer: this does post does not constitute legal advice.

Patenting the man-in-the-middle attack ought to mark the end of software and business method patents. It's (1) obvious, (2) been done, and (3) making hacks patentable ought to be contrary to public policy.

I don't think this patent was specifically targeting Skype. If you search for the keyword Skype, it actually says that the method may or may not work for VOIP applications.

Besides, the patent was filed back in 2009, long before Microsoft acquisition in Skype.