Stateful patent by Check Point
Article written on March 17, 1997.
I was looking at a Check Point presentation where they say that stateful is a technology developed and patented by Check Point, so I dug and found the article from CNET.
“For the bulk of customers, architecture is just one of many factors. I see it as much ado about nothing,” Julian said. “Other things are more significant than the architecture.”
— Ted Julian, an influential firewall analyst
“They patented their implementation of stateful inspection, not stateful inspection itself.”
— Frank Roys, marketing director of the Cisco Internet appliances group