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Red Hat Sued Over Hibernate ORM Patent Claim

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the done-it-first dept.

fmarines writes "Firestar Software has filed a patent claim against Red Hat for infringing on a patent Firestar filed in 2000 covering O/R mapping. The amount of the lawsuit was not disclosed. The complaint centers around JBoss 3, and the patent claims that JBoss was given prior notice that marketing, distribution, and support services violates Firestar's patent, and that Firestar 'has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial damages.' Firestar produces the ObjectSpark, an transactional object mapping engine which appears to not have had a new release since May 2003, according to the Firestar press release page."

10 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. TFA seems confused by Brian+Blessed · · Score: 4, Interesting
    It says:
    The complaint centers around JBoss 3

    JBoss 3 was released in May 2002.
    However, Hibernate wasn't a JBoss project until September 2003.

    I'd guess that the claim relates to Hibernate 3, but they are desperate to mention JBoss as much as possible for the FUD value.
  2. Buy a company - get sued! by Corrado · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is really low - wait until your software gets in heavy rotation and then go after people using it. My question is why did they go after RedHat/JBoss? Why not go after the big dogs; Oracle (TopLink), BEA (Kodo), and even the JCP (EJB JPA)?

    Again, software patents are a bad idea.

    --
    KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
  3. This is the definition of an obvious patent by chriseyre2000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How can you implement an Object Realstional Mapper and not violate this patent?

    1. Re:This is the definition of an obvious patent by dsurber · · Score: 3, Interesting

      TopLink existed as a Smalltalk product in the early 90's, '93 or '94. I know because my company developed a Smalltalk OR mapping product that competed with TopLink.

      It takes more discipline than I have to try to understand a patent, but I'd be astonished if the there isn't a ton of prior art, starting with TopLink.

  4. Is Ruby on Rails Affected? by Corrado · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just took a quick read of the patent and it looks like this is a pretty wide reaching patent. Anything that maps a database to an object is covered by this one. Does this mean Ruby on Rails is under the gun? Of course, they have no money (I guess) so they wouldn't be a target. But they would still be violating a patent and that could limit their future growth potential.

    --
    KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
  5. Sue them back into oblivion. by lowieken · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Firestarter Software is probably not doing very well. Why else would they launch a software patent lawsuit? On top of that, they have actual products in the market. Seems to me that this makes them very vulnerable to countersuits.

    Am I right thinking it shouldn't be too difficult to sue Firestarter Software into oblivion?

  6. Prior Art? by Phil+John · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Surely there's a wealth or prior art for this kind of thing, ORM was popular before 2000. What about Next Computer's Enterprise Objects Framework? That's been around since at least 1994 according to WikiPedia - it still lives on as part of Apple's WebObjects system.

    --
    I am NaN
  7. Time for Red Hat to leave the USA by Alain+Williams · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Relocate to Europe where we don't have this patent lunacy[**]. These patent trolls would then be limited to trying to steal the USA turnover of Red Hat; Red Hat could perhaps take the option of abandoning the USA market. If Red Hat were to leave the USA it would send a strong message to congress how patents damage the USA economy ... they might even decide that doing right by their country is preferable to accepting the slush funds from the patent lobbyists.

    They have some nice offices here, no language problems for existing staff if they move to Guildford (UK).

    [**] - OK -- I know that some are trying to introduce it, but the EU seems to not be that stupid (fingers crossed)

  8. Prior Art by bbroerman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At my company, we wrote software that basically does the same thing back in the late 80's - early 90's and have been using it for high-profile, high-cost software ever since... While I don't know if we ever applied for a patent on the idea, I would bet that there is a lot of prior art out there... I just hope that Red Hat's lawyers are good enough to find it and use it appropriately.

    --
    Logic is the beginning of reason, not the end of it.
  9. Enterprise Objects (WebObjects) by Jimithing+DMB · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Enterprise Objects certainly implements everything described by that patent and a bit more because it provides a data access controller layer (not just a data model layer). Not to mention I've had some limited experience viewing someone else's hibernate-based code. EO/WO is so much better than Hibernate can ever hope to be.