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Linux Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat/Novell
walterbyrd writes "Just months after the last nail in SCO's case, and on the same day as Red Hat's brave words about patent intimidation, a company filed the first patent suit against the Linux operating system. IP Innovation LLC filed the claim against Red Hat and Novell over U.S. Patent No. 5,072,412. PJ points out there is prior art here: 'You might recall the patent was used in litigation against Apple in April 2007, and Beta News reported at the time that it's a 1991 Xerox PARC patent. But Ars Technica provided the detail that it references earlier patents going back to 1984.'"
After this attack, it is clear that changing the EU law and allowing software patents becomes much more difficult.
There are lots of people in EU using linux distributions without any legal concerns that would be very damaged the very day that EU suddenly recognizes this troll patent.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
So they are Suing RedHat and Novell for using whatever it is that violates the patent. Isn't that a bit like suing Dell because Microsoft's OS infringes on a patent and Dell distributes it?
You mean like investigating Dell because they sell hard drives that might infringe on a patent?
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Wasn't http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ created to combat this sort of event? What happens if the linux camp responds with suites of their own? Looking at OIN's portfolio, some of those patents look rather weighty. Not to mention that Novell, IBM, Redhat, and Sony all support linux and all have extremely large portfolios of their own. Did the principle of M.A.D. that the industry has relied on to keep from imploding just fly out the window? [IANAL, Rampant Speculation, etc, etc]
This patent is old, but not yet past the patent expiration date (that's 21 years, isn't it?), so it seems to pre-date any prior art I can think of. That seems to make it plausible.
But this patent was granted to Xerox, NOT "IP Innovation LLC". So why the hell is this 3rd party suing over a patent it wasn't granted?
The content of this patent is given in a language that is so obtuse that I can't tell whether it's describing something that was obvious, or if it's describing a single large virtual desktop, or if it's talking about something completely different than the "workspaces" we're used to seeing today. And I really don't have the time this morning to try deciphering it.
It so happens that even Microsoft is violating this patent directly (EXE link warning) http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/DeskmanPowertoySetup.exe
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
So you mean that making a patent deal with Microsoft doesn't really protect Novell from patent infringment suits? Well, isn't that the strangest thing...
I think Novell is about to figure out that no matter how you look at it, they got the short end of the stick in the Microsoft deal. They paid a lot of money so that firms other than Microsoft could sue them for patent infringement. Wonder if they'll just pay off this company like they did Microsoft. Wonder if they can afford to pay off all of the companies that will bring patent infringement suits against them.
What a way to paint a big, red, sue-me-for-patent-infringement-target on their company.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
However, there is a principle in law (or Equity) that one cannot do indirectly what he cannot do directly. An interesting question for practicing lawyers (I am a retired one and not up on all of this) would be, is there a way to attribute the Plaintiff's actions to Microsoft, canceling their GPL rights? Would it in fact be too late to do this based on their provable support of SCO (the massive loans arranged by MS to keep SCO afloat)? I'd sure like to hear what Eben Moglen has to say about this.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
This comes right on the heels of Steve Ballmer just suggesting that patent trolls go after RedHat. It was in the same speech he made about their intent to threaten RedHat and get FOSS application developers to write for Windows 'instead'.
There is another alternative, which could happen ... all development moves off-shore. Heck, RedHat could just move almost everything to Europe and trade there. (Alan Cox refuses to visit the US because of the stupid software patent issues).
Sell the core system in the US with from RedHat US with no Window Managers, and a link to repositories to download all the Window Managers you want, from software-patent-is-bad countries. Sell the full system everywhere else.
This is just one more step for the US in its continual technological decline. Whole industries are already gone - ram, most hard drives, lcd screens. Why not almost all FLOSS development?
Kevin Smith on Prince
It all appears MS is making up a new SCO.
A rational question is to ask "why also Novell"? Yes, we all know Novell and MS are buddies and all so this is a reason to think MS is not behind this lawsuit.
Imho what's going to happen is that Novell will be VERY collaborative and willing to accept to pay royalties for this BS patent, the game will be make Red Hat play alone. The expected aftermath (for MS-Novell) would be to make Red Hat look like a rogue company that does not respect IP. And yes, thanks to Novell the case will be much harder to solve for Red Hat than before, probably Novell will rush in making a deal so there's precedent...
Laugh at the ridiculous theory all you want, I just hope Novell does not prove me right on this one. But if they do, then I hope nobody will argue to me whose side Novell is playing for.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Novell could buy a patent license but then they either violate the software license or everyone else gets to use their patent license without having to buy their own.
GPL prevents the distrubution without a license that would be passed right along to Redhat and its customers for free. Besided the patent is more about XWindows/KDE/Gnome than it is about Linux. Sun is the one going to be hurting on this; They use Gnome for Solaris and that is GPL'd. They wont be able to ship Solaris without a license that can then be used by everyone for free, even those who are not Sun customers. The Linux kernel doesn't have a workspace interface; thats a userspace program.