Red Hat Files for Software Patents

Marsala writes "Apparently Red Hat has filed two patent applications for stuff related to the TUX webserver. The patents are for Embedded Protocol Objects and Method and apparatus for atomic file look-up. One has to wonder (if their patents are granted) what their licensing terms will be.... free for open source, or a tool to try and screw other Linux distros?" As reported by Linux Weekly News.

Comments

money or principle?

[I Want GNU!]

You have to think about this...are they filing for the money or will they open it? If they believe in linux as a principle of their company they won't prevent anyone else from using it, but if they simply want to make shareholders happy they might charge for it.

Re:money or principle?

[elandal]

Actually there's a very good other reason for patents: defense. Eg. if Microsoft were to charge RedHat for patent infringement (sp?), RH might be able to counter with their own patent portfolio, charging MS of infringing RH patents. That, of course, would lead to cross-licensing which is likely cheaper than going to court for patents that should never have been granted.

Re:money or principle?

[Alan Cox]

Very much so. The situation needs changing badly, but right now it forces people to play the stupid patent game either for good or for evil.

Expect a formal clarification from the Red Hat folks about this patent and usage (we didnt think it was news). Expect more patents too. In fact I've got two applications and I need to finish writing up - which I wouldn't be doing unless I was *convinced* this was the only way to do things in the short term, and that generic GPL use would be granted

Alan

Re:money or principle?

[King of the World]

Patents have nothing to do with free, open or closedness licencing. They are merely to do with a system whose intention is to prove who invented what first.

If you don't apply for a patent and you use 'your technology' then someone else could more easily take legal action upon you for using 'their technology'.

In this way having a patent means that you get to decide the rules under which the technology (kill me now for using that word) is used. A good patent owner will licence it under good rules, and a bad patent owner will licence under bad rules.

So it all comes down to how we think the owners of this patent will act upon uses of their 'technology'.

I certainly trust Redhat.

Re:money or principle?

[Waffle Iron]

Patents have nothing to do with free, open or closedness licencing. They are merely to do with a system whose intention is to prove who invented what first.

You're missing the key feature of patents here. The one "proven" to invent first by virtue of a patent gets the privilege of setting arbitrary license terms for any use of the covered invention. Thus, a patent has everything to do with licensing, and it may be "closed" at the whim of the patent holder at any time.

If it was only about proving who invented first, a system like that used for acedemic publishing would fit the bill just fine. As a matter of fact, such a system would probably do more to "promote useful arts and sciences" for software than patents will. (Remember, promoting arts and sciences was the whole motivator for patents in the first place. Patents were *not* created just to institute a new form of "ownership" so that people can bask in additional property rights.)

Patents were originally intended to encourage people to not keep machines and manufacturing methods locked up as trade secrets, so everyone would benefit (initially from the shared knowledge, and using the invention directly after a few years). This does not match software development. Copyrights allow people to keep the actual implementation details secret for a century, so the patent disclosure doesn't do much good. Anything disclosed in the patent document can be trivially reverse engineered from the software product anyway, since all of the secrets are shipped with the product. The patent provides little if any additional knowledge to the general public. Therefore, due to the nature of software, a software patent provides essentially no value to the public in return for the monopoly granted to the patent holder.

What about MS in this deal

[CatPieMan]

Won't this have the potential to hurt MS embeded OSes as well as embeded linux? Maybe Redhat is just protecting themselves from having some other company come up and steal this patent out from under them and make Redhat pay someone else to liscense something that Redhat created in the first place. Not that I am a total Redhat supporter, but, we should wait and see what happens with this one.

-CPM

Prior art.

[WasterDave]

There's something I do not understand about patents, like, how on earth can this be patented? Specifically the first patent:

"Dynamic and static protocol objects are mixed together at a server and included in a dynamic reply to a communication request made by a client application."

Ahhhhm, so a client requests something and a reply is made that is partially dynamic and partially static? So, like php then? Like perl cgi pages? Like any reporting engine ever written?

And, check this out, step by step explainations of how the code works. This shit only exists to keep lawyers happy.

Don't get it.
Dave

I'm far from being a Redhat apologist...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I don't even like redhat linux. At all.

But, as much as I dislike their product, I just get the strange feeling inside, that their company isn't run by the complete and utter assholes we see everywhere else.

To suspect them of pulling any dirty is just damn wrong. Maybe it's just me wanting at least one company out there to be ethical, some really corny wishful thinking on my part, but what have they ever done to you? They deserve an an apology.

Besides, they might be able to stick it to M$ somehow...

This has been proposed in the past as a defense.

[SwellJoe]

I recall a few year back, this was discussed amongst GNU folks, and others as a mechanism to prevent proprietary vendors from locking 'us' (us being Open Source developers, users and businesses) out of important inventions.

I have only seen one 'iffy' thing ever come out of Red Hat (the RHN server, which is an in-house secret...though they appear to be helpful with the Current developers), so I tend to believe they have no intention of using this offensively against Open Source companies or users.

Besides, I seem to recall the GPL protects us against anyone integrating incompatibly licensed code into GPL software. TUX is part of the Linux kernel, thus it cannot be restricted or fees enforced on its use. Red Hat would have a bear of a time rewriting TUX independently of the kernel (Ingo could do it, of course), but the damage is done. Those inventions (and inventions they are...Ingo does really cool stuff, this isn't a one-click patent folks) are already in the development kernels. We (the community) already own these developments.

So, what I'm trying to say is:

Thank you very much, Ingo and Red Hat. I am very appreciative of the interesting inventions you have given to us. I forward to learning about them, using them, and enjoying the benefits they give us. And boy, that sure was clever of you to patent it, so that Microsoft will have a bit of trouble stepping on your toes in the future. Way to play hardball!

Re:What if this could defeat GNU license?

[JordanH]

• I just had an unecessarily alarmist thought. Could this be used to defeat the GNU license? Sure, you still release your source code under the GNU license, but also charge everyone for using 'your' patents.

I don't think so, but maybe I don't understand what you're getting at. I think these clauses from the GPL pretty much cover this potential problem (along with the GPL as a whole and the associated rights that everyone are granted who receives GPLd code):

7. If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenforceable under any particular circumstance, the balance of the section is intended to apply and the section as a whole is intended to apply in other circumstances.

It is not the purpose of this section to induce you to infringe any patents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any such claims; this section has the sole purpose of protecting the integrity of the free software distribution system, which is implemented by public license practices. Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice.

This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed to be a consequence of the rest of this License.

8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted in certain countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, the original copyright holder who places the Program under this License may add an explicit geographical distribution limitation excluding those countries, so that distribution is permitted only in or among countries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporates the limitation as if written in the body of this License.

ooohhhh... quoting the GPL on Slashdot... (-1:Karmawhore)

Doesn't matter

[awptic]

The GPL requires anyone holding a patent on the software to allow others to freely use/modify it.
From the GPL license:

Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free
program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the
program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any
patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.


The only thing this patent prevents is from others creating proprietary versions of the technology in question; which, IMO, is a Good Thing(tm). In fact, in the thread about this on the LKML someone brought up that the FSF even encourages doing this.

Damn right they should file patents

[tjwhaynes]

So Redhat has done some significant work on the TUX webserver and it's patentable. They should DEFINTELY file those patents.

Now don't get me wrong. Software patents are generally bad news - they are too long (even 10 years in software is an eternity) and a lot aren't even worth the paper they are written on. But for the software industry today they are part and parcel of developing software and protecting the work that a software company has put in.

Patents aren't like trademarks - there is no 'patent dilution' to worry about. So RedHat can be extremely selective about who is allowed to benefit from the patent (even free of charge) and who is never going to get a license. This is particularly important - MS has a vested interest in watching over a lot of the developments in the TUX webserver as TUX is the main performance competitor to IIS. If RedHat patents its best ideas, it makes a public record of the 'invention'. If MS patents something that RedHat came up with, yes, prior art may be used to fight a legal battle to have the patent nulled but that is considerably more expensive than simply patenting the good stuff first.

Now I look forward to the day when software patents last 3 years from filing (because I dont see software patents ever going away totally). I look forward to the day when all software patents are published PRIOR to the patent being awarded so that many eyes may suggest prior art challenges. But until that day comes, Free and Open source companies had better use the weapons at hand to protect their assets. And if that means filing patents so be it.

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

mixing patent and copyright

[_|()|\|]

I've got two [patent] applications and I need to finish writing up - which I wouldn't be doing unless I was *convinced* this was the only way to do things in the short term, and that generic GPL use would be granted

If you're opposed to (software) patents, I hope you won't limit free licensing to GPLed software. While it may be difficult to implement, mutual defense is the appropriate patent analog to the GNU GPL.

The intersection of copyright and patent opponents is smaller than either on its own. If you are in both camps, support them separately with copyleft and mutual defense. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, or something like that.

Legitimate Reason?

[PRickard]

Maybe someone at Red Hat thought they should get a patent on it before some asshole from another company did. If Red Hat patents the technology they can let anybody or nobody use it - at least they have control. Some outside group might have gotten a patent on the concept and held it hostage, forcing all users to pay.

I'm not a fan of silly IP actions, but Red Hat filing for a patent is NOT the same as Red Hat preventing others from using the technology. There are occasionally good reasons for this stuff and you should wait and see what the company does before you jump on them.