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Linux Violates 283 Patents, says Insurance Company
Apro+im writes "According to this article over at ZDNet:
'Linux potentially infringes 283 patents, including 27 held by Microsoft but none that have been validated by court judgments, according to a group that sells insurance to protect those using or selling Linux against intellectual-property litigation.'
Dan Ravicher, founder and executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, conducted the analysis for Open Source Risk Management. OSRM is like an insurance company, selling legal protection against Linux copyright-infringement claims. It plans to expand the program to patent protections."
That most of the code was written in Europe BEFORE we had software patents.
There is some question about whether Microsoft has an explicit strategy of using patents as a weapon against open source.
Seriously - can anyone think of the kind of thing that anyone could have patented? Disk I/O? Threading?
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The problem with Linux is that there is no one organization with sufficient stake to specifically pursue such a strategy. Though I'm sure if push came to shove, IBM would be willing to use its patent arsenal in defense of its Linux-using customers, given how much they've invested in Linux deployments and Linux-based services work. Anyway, of course it's in this insurance company's interest to point out every possibly infringing instance.
Sounds like a protection racket, to me.
~*~ Tara
Of course it's a publicity stunt. Their whole business is dependent upon anti-Linux FUD. If PHBs believe this crap, as well as the junk they see in the press from SCO, they start thinking about who'll take the fall when they get sued for using Linux. Nevermind that it won't happen. If that particular PHB is the one that might get fired, he just might start trying to convince his own PHB that thy need Linux insurance.
It's like selling earthquake insurance to a farmer in Indiana.
The article didn't mention it, but are the potential violations in kernel-land, or do they also entend into user-land and ``Linux'' is being used in the broad sense of the term?
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
Forbes has a rather more critical article about this.
Since source code has been ruled as expressive speech, do software patents mean speech is patentable? Or will the stack collapse from that end?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
So, when Foo Corp claims that by using Linux you are infringing their patents you simply remain noncommittal (just as you should never accept blame at a car accident) and call OSRM. If OSRM is as good as my car insurer that's pretty much the end of the matter as far as you are concerned. They deal with Foo Corp and their lawyers and resolve the issue as best they can, whether that be getting the case dismissed or negotiating and paying your license fees. You'll probably get a letter every now and then letting you know of any developments, requesting information they might need and so on, but that's all. For many CTOs paying a company like OSRM some money each year might just be worth the removal of one less thing to fret and loose sleep over.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
but then were re-applied copyright retroactively when the terms of copyright law were extended
Those things are illegal not because of ex-post-facto, but because it violates the 5th Amendment: private property was taken without compensation.
Copyrights which had been scheduled (since their inception) to be turned over to the public were seized by the government, and then handed over to the copyright registrants. This is flagrantly illegal, and if Lawrence Lessig were a better litigator, he could've proved so in the Eldered case.
According to them, those patents should already be enforceable today, but the law is not interpreted the same everywhere. So they want to harmonise it and make sure that software patents are enforceable everywhere in Europe, except pretty much only in the UK as it is until now (they never mention this last part obviously).
Of course, our (FFII's) position is that until now, those patents are generally not enforceable, in the UK they interpret the European Patent Convention in a completely ass-backwards way (just like the Commission/Council) and when you force all of Europe to accept the UK's case law then this is not just some formal "harmonisation".
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"Loser pays" needs to have a reasonable cap or it just ends up making the "my lawyer is more expensive than your lawyer" argument even more effective than it already is. If you think you have a good case, and only a 20% chance of losing, are you willing to take that risk if that 20% chance will result in losing a few thousand dollars? Probably - but what if it's a 20% chance that you'll have to pay for a team of Microsoft's Lawyers salaries for a year? Not so ignorable a risk anymore...
The "loser pays" plan is usually implemented in countries where Lawyers don't command nearly as large a salary as they do here.
And on Kerry vs Ashcroft: Compare apples to apples - potential presidents to potential presidents, or potential cabinet members to potential cabinet members.
If you have problems with Ashcroft's civil liberties record, don't vote for his group just because Kerry is even worse - go third party.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.