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Analyzing Microsoft's Linux Lawsuit
jammag writes "Open source advocate Bruce Perens takes a close look at Microsoft's lawsuit against TomTom (discussed here last week), which involves an implementation of the Linux kernel, and calls it essentially a paper tiger. He notes: 'the technologies claimed in the 8 patents involved are so old and obvious that it's fair to say they have a high "Duh!" factor. There's an anti-trust angle to this suit that could blow up in Microsoft's face. And there's a high probability that some or all of the patents involved are invalid, due to recent court decisions.' Although the legal expense for TomTom to defend itself in court could be astronomical — meaning they may be forced to settle — in Perens' view Microsoft is aware its case is weak, yet hopes for a PR victory at limited cost." And reader nerdyH adds speculation from Open Innovation Network CEO Keith Bergelt that Redmond's action could be retaliation for TomTom's spurning a Microsoft acquisition bid in 2006.
Because the legal analysis will go along the lines of "While asshattery on MS's behalf, they will likely win or force Tomtom to settle". This isn't something the Slashdot demographic wants to hear.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Lawyers have generally been reluctant to do this because they can get in special kinds of trouble.
Bruce Perens.
I didn't say that, and you didn't read the article, so kindly go do so and say something more clueful next time.
Bruce Perens.
OSDL has implemented a legal defense fund for this purpose.
http://www.osdlab.org/en/Linux_Legal_Defense_Fund
I'm not sure how it works but I believe you can make donations to them (tax deductible?) specifically for the purpose of defending OSS developers against lawsuit from litigious douche bag companies such as M$, SCO, and various other patent trolls.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
In that case, Microsoft could have come out with a product incorporating the BSD code, while suing other users of that same BSD code. This happened with JMRI.
Bruce Perens.
Interesting. Doesn't that assume that TomTom made the code in question public, which they wouldn't have to do with a BSD license?
I checked and FreeBSD, as well as a long list of other operating systems will mount a FAT32 partition. With FreeBSD it is just mount with "-t msdos,' which will let it mount FAT floppies, FAT16, and FAT32 partitions.
Of course, I'm sure you know this. What I'm just trying to figure out is if they are going after TomTom because they use Linux, or if they would be going after TomTom regardless.
Thanks,
transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
No. You don't need to look at any code to determine that it's mounting an SD card with a VFAT filesystem. Just look at the card. That's all MS needs to assert the patent. But in any case, it's easy to look at the code in most embedded systems, and certainly on TomTom. All of their proprietary code is on the SD card too.
Bruce Perens.
Factually incorrect. Garmin also uses Linux; others probably do as well.
---linuxrocks123
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.