Red Hat Hit With Patent Suit Over JBoss

An anonymous reader writes "A small software company is claiming that Red Hat's JBoss open source middleware violates one of its patents and is asking a court to stop Red Hat from distributing the product. Software Tree LLC claims that JBoss infringes on its database patent for 'exchanging data and commands between an object oriented system and a relational system.' Software Tree's partners include Microsoft, and that the suit was filed in Eastern Texas, which is known as a plaintiff's paradise for patent actions."

Comments

Civil Procedure Question

[GPLDAN]

If the company you are suing is incorporated in one state, and you, the plaintiff, is in another - can you sue in a third state that has no party resident within it, just because it's a "paradise", full of hang-em-high judges?

IANAL, as you may suspect.

Wasn't Bilski supposed to have stopped these???

[BUL2294]

I'm no lawyer but wasn't the Bilski decision supposed to put an end to these software patent lawsuits & (essentially) invalidate software patents? Software patents don't deal with "machines" or "transformations", so I'm confused as to how these continue... Or is the Bilski case waiting to have their day in front of the US Supreme Court and such cases will continue until a ruling comes down from SCOTUS...

Re:Prior art? BO vs. Cognos

[H0p313ss]

Furthermore... they seem to be trying to patent what TopLink was already doing prior to 1996.

For those who care, TopLink has now been opensourced as EclipseLink

NeXTStep Dbase, Enterprise Object Frameworks

[tyrione]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_Objects_Framework

NeXT, now Apple has patents on this stuff predating this with DBKit.

Re:Yay for selective quoting!

[Ninnle Labs, LLC]

What a crook. Bad! I had to look twice because I fully expected this to be a "kdawson". Not this time, though.

I'd put money down that the "anonymous reader" that wrote the summary was actually kdawson.

Why doesn't this threaten everyone?

[ggraham412]

I've been writing custom data access layers since 2001, and they all have components that vaguely resemble this: http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/week15/OG/html/1329-2/US06163776-20080408.html. There needs to be a test that goes beyond "prior art" for software patents. Namely, if a software solution is obvious given the problem and the tools, then it should not be patentable. Otherwise, patent law does not advance the common good, it merely makes programming more expensive/less productive.

Re:Crack down on forum shopping

[Bobb9000]

While it doesn't go that far, there's a bill just introduced in Congress that would make forum shopping like this more difficult. The Patent Reform Act of 2009 would mean, in part:

Patent Litigation Venue: "A party shall not manufacture venue by assignment, incorporation, or otherwise to invoke the venue of a specific district court." Venue is only proper were (a) defendant is incorporated; (b) defendant has its principle place of business; (c) where the defendant is permanently located and has committed substantial acts of infringement; or (d) where the plaintiff resides if the plaintiff is a nonprofit or individual inventor. The court should transfer venue to avoid evidentiary burdens when transfer can be accomplished without causing undue hardship to the plaintiff."

(From Patently-O)