Red Hat Seeks Limits on Software Patents

eldavojohn writes "RedHat went to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals asking for limits on software patents yesterday. They have not uploaded their full brief yet online, but promise to post it soon. Here's a tidbit: 'Given the litigation risk, some open source companies, including Red Hat, acquire patents for the sole purpose of asserting them defensively in the event they are faced with a future lawsuit. Red Hat also provides open source intellectual property protections through our Open Source Assurance Program that protects our customers and encourages them to deploy with confidence. Our strategy is a prudent one and mitigates the risk of patent lawsuits, but it would be unnecessary if the system itself were fixed.'"

Comments

Patents

[omeomi]

I remember hearing once that companies like IBM often build a stockpile of patents, not so much to litigate, but so nobody else can tell them what to do with patents they don't have. Even if you're infringing on somebody else's patents, if you have enough patents of your own, you can probably find one that they're infringing on, and you've essentially come to a stalemate, so everybody's happy. Only works for the big players, though. The little guys get screwed.

Re:Patents

[QuantumRiff]

Dave, the CEO of NetApp had a very interesting blog posting about patents last summer. Especially interesting since NetApp and Sun are now in a Patent lawsuit battle royale.

Re:Patents

[MrSteveSD]

We have the situation today where it's pretty much impossible to write a program without hitting loads of patents. If I was given the brief of writing a video player and I just did it in a way that seemed sensible, you can virtually guarantee that I would have infringed on dozens of patents. The only hope I would have of not getting sued is if the player was not at all popular or if patent holders felt it would generate bad publicity.

The word "VLC player" just popped into my head while I was writing this, and I did a search. As I predicted there are lots of patent threats against the player.

Re:Patents

[delt0r]

You will not infringe on dozens, you will infringe on *thousands*. I am doing just what you said, more or less. There are many many patents that are mathematically *identical*. Some even "patent" the mathematical process (lifting in this case) to derive *any* efficient implementation of DCT or similar.

Of course there are patents on sticks for dogs to fetch, how to swing in a swing and the use of a laser pointer to entertain cats (I think there a dozen of so of that one). Its quite clear that these patents won't stand up to a proper challenge and some of the video based patents have been ruled invalid when its gone to court.

But even if you win. Really the only winners are the lawyers....

I sometimes feel sorry for the RedHat brand

[pembo13]

RedHat is essentially that son who does everything the family needs, but is rarely acknowledged because he isn't 'cool'.

More on topic, I hope this works out, if only so it would reduce their costs as I like their services.

Re:I sometimes feel sorry for the RedHat brand

[everphilski]

By the "vocal" community perhaps. Industry tends to use it pretty hardcore. I've been through three engineering (mechanical/aerospace) jobs in the last three years, and all three, when using Linux, used Red Hat.

So while people piss and moan on /. and other forums, and praise Ubuntu or whatever flavor of the month, real work does get done on Red Hat and similar distros. It's just that you wouldn't hear about it, unless you were really **doing** it.

Re:I sometimes feel sorry for the RedHat brand

[Znork]

is shunned by it's own community.

What part of which community?

As far as I can tell, Red Hat has a very good reputation and is widely appreciated. They hire a lot of important coders, they contribute much and they release most of their software under GPL. Sure you have the distro of the day crowd, but they'll always be installing new distributions.

Re:Honestly

[greenbird]

As much as I hate it, some great software has been developed under the patent system that otherwise might not have been made.

I call bullshit. Name one category of software that would not have been developed without patents and name a few specific products.

Re:Honestly

[arotenbe]

Name one category of software that would not have been developed without patents and name a few specific products. Annoying interactive cartoon interfaces. Microsoft Bob. Clippit.

Oh, wait...

Re:Honestly

[Ed Avis]

You might argue that Frauenhofer would not have done the R&D to develop the MP3 encoding without the expectation they could get software patents and charge people for them. Then again, other formats like Ogg Vorbis were developed freely (even if MP3 came first).

Even if such cases do exist, they are more than outweighed by the cases where innovation is blocked, not promoted, by patent minefields.

Re:Honestly

[QuantumRiff]

As much as I hate it, some great software has been developed under the Copyright system that otherwise might not have been made. A solution? I don't have it.

Fixed that for you!

Re:Honestly

[garett_spencley]

"I call bullshit. Name one category of software that would not have been developed without patents and name a few specific products."

PNG, Ogg Vorbis etc.

Legislate from the Bench

[Archangel Michael]

While I despise software patents just like most of slashdot, I hate seeing the solution being legislation from the bench.

Software Patents are just about as silly as can be. If one thinks about it, anyone can use patents for PERSONAL or CORPORATE use, that patents should only apply to items being sold/marketed as a product or an improvement to an existing product for sale.

Lets just look at how this works, using some ancient tech, Stills. Lets say that I came up with a process or improvement that increases still production or the quality of the spirits being distilled. I can then market that improvement to all the other still makers, or start marketing stills that have that improvement built in.

However, if Joe Whitelighting makes his own stills, for his own use, and he happens upon building a still with said improvement, built by himself, then the person with the patent has no recourse.

The point of Patents is to get them into use as efficiently as possible. Not to horde patents to ideas and inventions that never get built.

In the case of software patents, Amazon isn't distributing, selling, or otherwise offering for license "OneClick". It is using this patent to keep others from using it, even if the others are building it (or something similar) themselves.

In this case the Patent is being used not to reward Amazon for something they are selling, but rather to punish anyone using a similar or related idea.