Open Invention Network Calls Out Microsoft

Stony Stevenson writes with news that the head of the Open Invention Network has summarily dismissed Microsoft's claims that Linux violates a number of its patents. Calling the move 'clear FUD', Jerry Rosenthal calls them out by asking for Microsoft to disclose the patents they are worried about. His argument is that if the patents are something to be proud of, if the software giant feels they're sure to succeed in court, there's no need for behind-the-hand namecalling. "Rosenthal believes that, if there are grounds for patent infringement, there would either be easy workarounds or the open source community would find 'prior art' which would invalidate the patent. OIN buys patents on the open market and makes them available to companies royalty free, so long as those companies pledge never to use their own patents to attack open source code.The organisation was set up by IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony and has a war chest of millions of dollars."

Comments

Re:Someone should sue MS for disgrace of defamatio

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Because deep down everyone knows that linux distros (not linux itself, necessarily) violate patents en masse, just like most software does.
You see companies like Microsoft, Apple, Sony, IBM, getting sued all the time for patent infringement and/or making patent deals with each other and/or paying appropriate licensing fees to license other's patents. Are you really so naive as to believe that Red Hat violates NO patents? Come on now.

As an example, VideoLan admits that their VLC player runs afoul of mpegla patents, but says that since they are "free" and "open source" that it's up to the user to pay mpegla's patent fees, knowing full well that users aren't going to bother, and in fact, saying to MPEGLA, "You want your fees? Then sue our users, not us".
http://wiki.videolan.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#What_about_personal.2Fcommercial_usage.3F

It's a game that many OSS devs like to play: "I'm 'open source' so I can violate patents at will!!"

But big companies like Red Hat *can* pay the necessary patent fees, and they shouldn't be getting a free ride. They're one of the big boys, so let the act like it and license the patents in question by paying the fees or making licensing deals or whatever. Why should other companies like MS, Apple, Sony, Panasonic, Oracle, etc, have to pay patent fees and make licensing deals, but not Red Hat and other big-name linux distros?

To answer your question again, Red Hat and the like don't want to start a suit that could end up with an official declaration that they *are* violating lots of Microsoft patents, and would be liable to pay up for the entire time that they've been violating said patents. And that would open the flood gates, because while Red Hat might be violating 200 (or whatever) Microsoft patents, you can be sure they are violating hundreds more patents by others, and those others will come a-knocking.