Red Hat, Novell sued for patent infringement

Suddenly all those discussions about the discordant ways of open-source software and patent law have become a lot less abstract.

Companies called IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corporation sued Red Hat and Novell on Tuesday, claiming the top Linux sellers' software products infringe U.S. patent 5,072,412, "User interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects," and two identically named patents. The suit (PDF), in the U.S. District Court in Eastern Texas, seeks damages and a permanent injunction prohibiting any further infringement.

Red Hat spokeswoman Leigh Day said Friday only that the company is aware of the suit and "will review the situation." Novell spokesman Bruce Lowry said the company is assessing the suit and that "it's too early to tell, tactically, whether it makes sense for us and Red Hat to join forces."

But as with another recent case, the Software Freedom Law Center's copyright infringement suit against Monsoon Multimedia, which takes the offensive in enforcing free and open-source programming interests, the ripples will likely travel well beyond this particular case.

"Although I and many attorneys in the open-source industry have long been concerned about patent challenges to open-source companies, this case appears to be the first by patent trolls against an open-source licensor," said Mark Radcliffe, a DLA Piper intellectual property attorney who has long been involved in open-source legal matters, on his blog. IP Innovation is a subsidiary of Acacia Technologies, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Acacia has licensed patents to a wide variety of companies, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Samsung, Exxon, J.C. Penney, the Walt Disney Co., Wendy's, Revlon, Orbitz, General Electric and 3M, according to the company. It had revenue of $46.8 million from the third quarter of 2006 through the second quarter of 2007.

Buying a license to a patent is often the quickest way to make such lawsuits go away, and companies often do so because it can be cheaper than a multimillion-dollar, drawn-out suit that occupies many employees' hours. But licensing a patent isn't such a simple matter when it comes to open-source software.

For example, a company that distributes a program such as the Linux kernel under the General Public License (GPL) isn't permitted to do so if it doesn't grant all recipients of the software the rights it has.

And in general, the patent system is somewhat at odds with open-source software in general. The former grants a limited-term monopoly to an inventor, but the latter involves unencumbered sharing of technology.

One obvious aggressor is Microsoft. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer declared in May that Linux and other open-source projects infringe 235 Microsoft patents. And according to a BetaNews transcript of another speech this week in England, Ballmer said more recently, "People (who) use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to eventually to compensate us."

Red Hat offers a warranty in which it promises to replace any code found to infringe others' intellectual property, and both it and Novell offer customers legal protections. They have deeper pockets than most open-source companies, but they are by no means the only distributors of Linux-based products.

Groklaw, a site that monitors open-source legal actions and helped bring the new suit to light, predicted the suit would be a fitting sequel to The SCO Group's long-running but faltering Linux-related cases against IBM, Novell and others. "I think SCO II has arrived," said Groklaw founder Pamela Jones in a posting Thursday evening.

Jones pounced on two Microsoft connections, both also on Acacia's Web site: Brad Brunell joined the company this month as senior vice president after 16 years at Microsoft, including general manager of intellectual property licensing, and Jonathan Taub, who joined in July as vice president after leaving Microsoft as director of strategic alliances for the company's mobile and embedded devices division.

[WJeansonne]

Make my day!

So much for having a cavalier attitude and sticking your head in the sand of over intellectual property rights. As they say in Texas, that'll learn em'!

[WJeansonne]

PJ's paranoid obssesion with Microsoft is over the top

That woman is ridiculous!

[Vegaman_Dan]

Could be interesting

This could really help Linux prove that it is ready for the real world- ie business. If it can toss away the shackles of uncertainty and support that is the bain of the opensource existance and offer a rock solid solution that consumers don't have to worry about being sued for using, then they can make a good jump ahead in their industry.

I wish them well to finally settle things one way or another. Open-source is a cool thing, but the very same things that make it so neat and cool are what make it dangerous for businesses to use. They can't take the chance to invest heavily into a product that may get yanked out from under them due to legal issues later.

[otheus]

More trivial patents

Another case for patent reform.

Kudos to "inventors" Henderson, Card, and Maxwell for devising a data schema that allows each virtual desktop to use the same Desktop icons. Woo. This patent was filed in 1987 and granted in 1991. Strangely, it has appeared in variants of X-Windows since at least 1989, when I first started using this "invention".

I think there was more work put into filing the patent than in the underlying innovation. I wonder how often that is the case.

[Dr. StrangeOne]

Just Another Form of Extortion

This is no different then say the MOB insisting you need to take out an insurance policy (protection) with them in order to conduct business. Only difference is one side uses thugs and the other lawyers.

[TC110]

Isn't this patent expired or near expiration?

Patents generally expire after 20 years from the application date. Since this patent was filed on March 25, 1987 one would expect that it would have expired March 25, 2007 or if they use the older 17 year rule from issue date then this patent expires next year, December 10, 2008.

[Commander_Spock]

Tete-a-tete!

"Red Hat, Novell sued for patent infringement"... Wow! Told you so Sergeant: The Trees Are Moving - It must be those 800lb Gorillas (OS/2 Warp/eComStation) having their (read the subject line). It must be time for the "Desktop" hunting expeditions to begin!

[sportcatz]

patents

Tenchnogreed hath no boundaries.

[digitalshaman]

better question why is microsoft behind PATENT FAIRNESS COALITION?

if the coalition for patent fairness truly wants to improve the quality
of patents, why didn't they go through negotiations instead of
resorting to litigation?

hmmm...

[Bubulus]

Legal equivalent of Usenet trolls

This is just another example of losers attempting to pervert the legal system to extort money from successful innovators. Hopefully they will meet the same fate as USL and SCO. The whole notion of patenting software has been controversial. The copyright system is probably more appropriate.

[prothe113]

Abolish software patents!

Europe has had a long debate about software patents, and about whether or not they add anything to the common good. Many sources think that they do not, IP trolls (unsurprisingly) disagree.

Software patents do little except enrich the lawyers; even the original innovators don't end up seeing much money (it's all absorbed by giant holding companies and IP trolling firms).

Abolish software patents today, and we may start seeing true innovation in the industry for the first time in a few decades.

[rhaft22]

Time is Right

I think the timing is right to address one of the key questions which loom over Linux (and other open source products). Linux patent infringement claims have gone unanswered and perhaps rightfully so. Perhaps this is the case that Microsoft really doesn't want to happen. A "victory" by Linux will give it perhaps an un-stoppable path to future dominance while a loss will give the Linux community the information it can use for future development which ensures the validity of open source licensing.

[Commander_Spock]

"Software Patents for Methods of Doing Business...

... ?A Second Class Citizen No More":

"For many years, anyone seeking to patent the use of a computer for functions that were previously performed manually had double trouble if the invention related to a ?way of doing business.? First, the Patent and Trademark Office decided that mathematical algorithms were not a statutory category of subject matter that could be protected by patent. Second, ?business methods? were held to be unpatentable. These two objections have been eroded over the years.

Recently, software inventions involving algorithms have been eligible for United States patents as long as tangible results are produced. Also, in the mid-1980s, Merrill Lynch won a court ruling that it was entitled to have a patent on its Cash Management System, which involved various types of processing of financial data by computer.

In 1998, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the State Street case destroyed the last remnant of the ?method of doing business? objection to obtaining a patent. It ruled that no legal basis exists for such an exception to patentability and that if an invention otherwise meets the standards for patentability, there is no legitimate basis for denying the issuance of a patent. This ruling was made for a software invention that used computerized processing to establish a system for pooling of assets of mutual funds..."

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/matters/matters-0012.html

According to the above... It is what the laws say anyhow this particular case is put "Eolas" or no "Eolas" of the Americas!!!. Read The Subject Line!

[Commander_Spock]

"Court Puts Further Limits on Software Patents"

"The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a recent court ruling that may severely limit the scope of both software and business model patents. The court found that 'The routine addition of modern electronics to an otherwise unpatentable invention' isn't enough to get over the 'non-obvious' hurdle that every patent is supposed to clear. This is a huge step in the right direction and one of the first admissions from the court system that perhaps software and business model patents have gone too far. 'In August, the Federal Circuit in essence raised the bar for proving willful infringement, a finding that allows a judge to triple a damage award. In April, the Supreme Court handed down a patent decision making it easier for trial-court judges to call an invention "obvious" and therefore ineligible for a patent.'"

Source: os2world: http://www.os2world.com/content/view/14973/79/

Let The "Showdown At The OK CORAL" (Games) Begin!

Got To Have That Ring Side Seat For The Economic Rate of Return (ERR) "Eolas Class" Missile Strikes!

[zigdog]

Another Blatently Bogus and Moronic Patent. RSS News sites watch out

According to this bogus patent obviously applied for for litigation only, all news sites should watch out. Wow, collecting data from different boxes to display on the same page !! What a bunch of MORONIC IDIOTS that company is composed of.

oh BTY I patented the alphabet last week so look for my law suit soon.

[cyberbian]

I propose a new law!

No free product shall be considered in regards to patents. Patents are meant to give a competative head start to commercialization. Surely there is no competition between a free product and a commercial one.

[adder1972]

Boycott Micro$oft

Now I had enough of Micro$oft's FUDD. Tomorrow my business will stop using M$ software, and we will switch to a Linux distro that has not payed fear-tax to M$.

[Commander_Spock]

Hello Houston We Have A Problem - Not!

Here is why - Code-Base OS/2 = Windows X.. = eComStation = VOYAGER = CASINNI:

"Around this time (circa 1990), Microsoft's other project, Windows, now at version 3.0, was starting to gain popularity with some users. Previously, Windows had been little more than a task-swapping shell for DOS applications, and was intended to compete with QuarterDeck's DesqView. Users found it appealing becaused it contained some of the GUI elements that were being developed for OS/2. A decision was made to drop all support for OS/2, and go strictly with Windows. However, because of the history they had with IBM, and because they still used so much of their technology (Object Linking and Embedding [OLE] aka ActiveX and Component Object Model [COM] are derived from Dynamic Data Exchange [DDE]), Microsoft to this day maintains a broad-ranging cross-licensing agreement with them. Windows NT was partially based on the OS/2 work that they did for IBM, and Windows 95 also borrows heavily from this code.

With Microsoft no longer doing development on the user interface, IBM was faced with creating this themselves. In this timeframe, a deal was made with Commodore. Commodore licensed IBM's REXX scripting language for inclusion in their AmigaOS, and IBM took many GUI design ideas from the AmigaOS for their new GUI. With the release of OS/2 2.0, the WorkPlace Shell (WPS) user interface was born. OS/2 was now a 32-bit operating system, with a fully object-oriented graphical user interface. Based on IBM's System Object Model (SOM), the WorkPlace Shell is still the model for all graphical user interfaces, since nothing else has come even close to providing the same functionality. OS/2 2.1 and 2.11 followed, including a version of 2.11 with full Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) support. OS/2 2.x won over many Windows 3.x users because of it's ability to run Windows programs seamlessly, while maintaining a stable system, something that Windows had trouble doing. IBM even went so far as to trademark the term "Crash-Proof..."

http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/OS2Warp.html

OS/2's History cannot be erased or re-written; and, it is the Operating System that Redmond fears the most!

"eComStation is a highly efficient operating system that truly flies on today?s powerful computers, and works great on legacy hardware. The minimal resource requirements extend the life of your IT environment, offering a greater return on your investment in computer hardware.

eComStation interoperates with Windows, Linux and NetWare. It also offers excellent compatibility with DOS, Java and OS/2 applications. You can safely share your ADSL, cable or ISDN Internet connection with up to 253 PCs by using the built-in firewall. And, all of this comes packaged with an easy to use GUI... WOW!

http://www.ecomstation.com/product_info.phtml

[davidsarmstrong]

Can't wait for first lawsuit against MS

for illegal use of Open Source patents. I'm wondering, for example, about the legality of the WMA and WMV formats. What are the chances that they are using open source compression (bzip) algorithms in those. The first version of MS Sql Server was so similar to Sybase Sql Server that you could use the same drivers. Sound like stolen code?

[wmb1957]

Not against Linux

Computer users today seem to forget that computing history is much older then the computers we use today. In fact GUI's, windows, mice all existed in the 70's.

Software patents did not exist in the U.S. in the '70s.

This patent does not apply to the linux kernal. If anything it would apply to the multi desktop portion of windowing systems that actually do multi desktops the way the patents refer to. In fact, it may apply to ANY application that has multiple workspaces as referred to in the patent rather then just desktops.
The patent seems to be quite broad.

Desktop wise, SWM was in 1989. However, swm is considered to be based upon the MIT work of the 1970's.
Incidentially, Linux was started in 8/91 and did not support X until version 0.95 in 3/92.