Kaspersky granted patent for hardware-based antivirus

Is this the next step in the arms race between antivirus companies and malware writers? Kaspersky Labs says the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted it a patent for a hardware-based antivirus solution. The patent, numbered 7,657,941, was filed last September and describes "an anti-virus (AV) system based on a hardware-implemented AV module for curing infected computer systems and a method for updating AV databases for effective curing of the computer system."