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.

Re:Civil Procedure Question

[Anonymous Coward]

They can, because RedHat is selling/offering their software in that state.

Re:Civil Procedure Question

[lorenlal]

As always: IANAL, but I do remember the class in business law I took... For whatever that's worth.

The statement that stuck with me in that class is, you go after them wherever they do their business. If they're based in New York, you go to New York cause that's the state that would have to most jurisdiction and ability to uphold whatever the ruling is.

Re:Civil Procedure Question

[uncreativeslashnick]

The question of which jurisdiction a business can be sued in is complicated, and depends on a lot of factors and tests. But basically, in federal court, you can generally sue a business wherever it does business, or whever the incident giving rise to the litigation occurred. The party being sued can try to change the venue, but the grounds would be something like, there's a better venue where more witnesses are located or something like that. Arguing that the jurisdiction is "plaintiff's paradise" won't pass muster.

If you're a large software company and you sell your software in every state in the union, you can be sued in ever state in the union, basically.

Re:Civil Procedure Question

[deathy_epl ccs]

They can, because RedHat is selling/offering their software in that state.

Note to self: When I start selling my software, refuse to sell it in Texas.

Untied States Patent

[Anonymous Coward]

Untied States Patent #078957284370958240976548037689725, Method and Apparatus for Initiating a Loud Communication Between a Liberal and a Conservative:
 
The Liberal says, "The government should pay for it!" The Conservative says, "Throw grandma down the stairs and out into the street!" A loud communication thus begins between the two.

I am going to sue every liberal and conservative in the country and seek an injunction to prevent them from talking to each other unless they pay me royalties.

LOL marketing speak

[Ninnle Labs, LLC]

According to its Web site, Software Tree specializes in "providing superior software infrastructure that shifts the application/database integration paradigm."

Well if nothing else they've definitely got the marketing speak down.

Re:LOL marketing speak

[von_rick]

Its got what market craves. Its got electrolytes.

Re:LOL marketing speak

[Fozzyuw]

Really? I was thinking it was from Idiocracy. Though, they were both written and directed by Mike Judge, I don't recall "electrolytes" being used in that film.

In Idiocracy, the future is dumb and they replaced all forms of water (except the toilet) with Gateraid(tm) like product and frequently promote it as better because it has "electrolytes". Including watering plants with it. Which happens to be destroying the crop population and no one can figure out why... except Luke Wilson, smartest man in the world. =P

Happily bought this film for $6 for my show of support. =)

Re:LOL marketing speak

[retchdog]

No, the narration explains that he wasn't smart enough (or, more accurately, educated enough) to figure out/know why. He just had a different tradition, one from an average ~105 IQ society instead of the miserable future.

Rather amusingly, Idiocracy is itself a dumbed-down and toned-down adaptation of the short story "The Marching Morons" (1951): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons, which I recommend reading.

Fishy

[AKAImBatman]

From the Fscking Patent:

One problem existing in the art is that there are no systems and methods to bridge the gap between the programming paradigm used for object-oriented systems and the programming paradigm used for relational systems.

O RLY? They honestly want us to believe that they invented O/R mapping? Then what is this ACM paper from 1996?

Object-relational mapping by Scott Amber

Either somebody didn't do their homework and their patent is going to fall under a weight of prior art, or they're just plain patent trolls. Given that they waited until 2009 (9 years after the patent was issued!), I'm leaning toward the latter.

Re:Fishy

[smallfries]

ObjectStore came out in 1988. The version that we used back in 1998 definitely performed this mapping for C++ code. I don't know if it counts as prior art because I can't remember how it handled the schemata for the mapping.

Re:Fishy

[ckaminski]

Disclaimer: I worked for ObjectStore for a while and for Progress (owner of ObjectStore) today.

ObjectStore is NOT ORM. It is an OODBMS. Probably not quite what you want for prior art.

Re:Fishy

[Rob Riggs]

Then you might know of a product called PowerTier, later renamed to DataXtend CE. That was an ORM for C++ and Java from Persistence, which was also acquired by Progress. We started using that at version 5 or 6 around 2000/2001 time frame.

Re:Fishy

[legutierr]

Well, here is one ORM system that would probably qualify as prior art, having been released in 1994.

Enterprise Objects is now bundled with Apple's Xcode as part of WebObjects. It's kind of ironic that Apple encourages WebObjects/EOF developers to deploy their applications on the JBoss application server, which also comes pre-installed on Mac OS X Server.

Yay for selective quoting!

[Slothrup]

"Software Tree's partners include Microsoft, IBM, Borland, and Sun"

Fixed that for you.

Re:Yay for selective quoting!

[duplicate-nickname]

Good catch. On top of that, as long as a company meets a few small requirements for developing on a Windows platform, they can become a Microsoft partner. It is not some secret club that goes around suing OSS companies on behalf of Microsoft.

Re:Yay for selective quoting!

[INeededALogin]

Not sure what you are trying to say. Nobody here has an anti-Microsoft agenda.

Re:Yay for selective quoting!

[benjymouse]

Only their website doesn't even mention Microsoft as a partner. IBM, Borland, Sun and Oracle are mentioned as partners, though, with contact details.

What was the intention of mentioning Microsoft and leaving out those partners? Is Microsoft a business partner at all?

I hate software patents. But summaries like this blatantly trying to skew facts to weasel in hints of a grand Microsoft conspiracy does the fight against software patents disservice.

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

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.

Re:Yay for selective quoting!

[shutdown -p now]

What was the intention of mentioning Microsoft and leaving out those partners? Is Microsoft a business partner at all?

It's on the company info page:

"Software Tree is an ISV partner with Microsoft."

Of course, all you have to do to get that status is to write software that works on Windows, and most shops that develop Windows software and sell it are registered MS ISV partners.

Of course, the guys are also:

"Software Tree is an IBM Solution Developer Program partner."

"Software Tree is a technology partner with Borland."

Re:Yay for selective quoting!

[Zapotek]

Well, not really.
I was working on a small web dev firm a couple of years ago and we were MS partners.

And we were not even writing in .Net, we only used OSS technologies (PHP/MySQL/FreeBSD).

The only advantage was that they send MS Win/Office copies with lots of legit serials for us to use.

East Texas

[Anonymous Coward]

East Texas is a hell hole.

Patent mentioned in article

[Anonymous Coward]

6,163,776

Link to US PTO United States Patent: 6,163,776

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

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that was simply the fevered hope of many open source criminals who seek to profit off the hard work and innovation of others.

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

[uncreativeslashnick]

Biliski was about the patent office rejecting a patent appliation, not an invalidation of any existing patent. As such, Biliski stands for the proposition that the Patent Office can reject certain types of patents that are like the one considered in Biliski. Apparently the patent in question in TFA was filed and granted long before Biliski came out, so Biliski has no practical effect on that patent directly.

Indirectly, one might argue that the patent should be invalid because of its nature, i.e. it never should have been granted. But that has to be done on a case-by-case basis for patents already granted.



So the short answer is, no.

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

[mabhatter654]

it's closed source DMCA protected software. There's no way law abiding programmers could see the source code and most of the key developers in these cases have too little time to reverse engineer other people's products.

In short a person "skilled in the art" saw some trade magazine article about a products general function and recreated it without looking... that's pretty much the definition of "general knowledge" as applied to patents.

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

[Bobb9000]

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...

Not exactly. Bilski did set up a new test for patentable subject matter, the "machine or transformation" test you noted, but it's not clear whether this shoots down software patents entirely (since programming a general-purpose computer with the software involved may make it a "specific machine" for the purposes of Bilski), and in any case, Bilski's only immediate effect is to prevent new patents from being issued that don't pass this test. Existing patents remain in force, even if they wouldn't have passed the machine or transformation test, until a court or the USPTO specifically rules them invalid. That doesn't happen until the patent is challenged.

If Bilski is read to invalidate software patents generally, then it would be very dangerous for Software Tree to bring this suit, since Red Hat could simply ask to the judge to rule the patent invalid. Since Bilski isn't clearly defined to do this, suits like this are still going to keep happening.

Woahh...

[GerardAtJob]

So... If I understand correctly : every OO program that talk with a relational database is guilty?...

no more comments...

Prior art? BO vs. Cognos

[H0p313ss]

"exchanging data and commands between an object oriented system and a relational system."

This sounds familiar... hmmm.... ah.

Business Objects' United States patent number 5,555,403 entitled "Relational Database Access System Using Semantically Dynamic Objects."

Fight fire with fire...

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

No ORM? In 1998? Yeah, right.

[Bazzargh]

In the patent application (dated 1998) they stated:
One problem existing in the art is that there are no systems and methods to bridge the gap between the programming paradigm used for object-oriented systems and the programming paradigm used for relational systems.

(from here on in you know there's going to be no prior art submitted that does exactly that, when in fact there was plenty.)

Liar liar pants on fire.

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.

Crack down on forum shopping

[davidwr]

That court, and all federal courts, should start rejecting all suits from or against companies where neither party's main presence is in this court's jurisdiction.

Unless one of the party's principal business is in the Eastern District, the court should say "have you tried the courts where you and the defendant are principally located first?" and accept only cases where

1) those courts rejected the case for whatever reason and
2) the case would not be rejected if the companies were located in the Eastern District of Texas.

This would allow limited forum shopping in cases where "local" courts dismissed the case out of hand, but would not allow shopping just to get a more favorable jury or judge.

In the alternative, simply dismiss all cases that aren't the principle address of either party. However, that might take an act of Congress.

Re:Crack down on forum shopping

[uncreativeslashnick]

No offense, but your response makes little sense, probably because you don't understand the rules governing jurisdiction.

If a Court "rejects" a case generally that means the case is over, period, and can't just be re-filed in another court. Of course it depends on how the court "rejects" the case because there are numerous ways a court can dispose of a case, a very few of which would allow refiling the case elsewhere.

Jursidictional rules are complicated and there are already means for transfering the venue of the case when it makes more sense to litigate in a specific location. But when you're a company that sells software everywhere in the U.S., currently, you can be sued anywhere in the U.S.

To solve the problem of forum shopping all you need to do is change the rule with respect to where the Plaintiff can file his case (e.g. change the rule so he can file either only in his home state or the defendant's home state). Of course there would be consequences to that kind of rule, pros and cons, etc., but it could be done.

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)

Re:Crack down on forum shopping

[DRJlaw]

(a) ... defendant... (b) ... defendant... (c) ...defendant... or (d) where the plaintiff resides if the plaintiff is a nonprofit or individual inventor.

Or, otherwise translated, you must sue the defendant in their home jurisdiction, and multiple defendants in multiple jurisdictions, unless we think that you're a sympathetic plaintiff, in which case you can sue in your home jurisdiction like every other Federal plaintiff bringing a claim against private party (assuming that there is personal jurisdiction).

One of many reasons why this legislation is going to require substantial changes before it will pass. No large patent owner is going to want to be forced into giving up the "home field advantage" in the name of patent reform, or to be forced to pursue multiple suits against multiple defendants in front of multiple judges where formerly they could pursue them as one.

Re:Crack down on forum shopping

[domatic]

I'm not sure that would help. All of the patent trolls would simply re-incorporate in East Texas.

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:Why doesn't this threaten everyone?

[mabhatter654]

The problem is copyrights and trade secrets. In "steel and stone" patents, product difference are quite apparent, arguing that your product does something different, or even "different enough" is relatively easy as you can point to the parts and demonstrate the actions to the judge. Often a company pays a small fee, then goes back with a "different enough" design to satisfy the judge that infringement is not occurring, then everybody moves on.

With software, it's never about the "parts" or the source code, it's always about end function. A moped and a tractor-trailer are the same thing on paper.. both have motors and carry people.. but in reality they are way different. There's no such "common sense" test for software, especially when dealing with higher-level things like databases and object oriented. On paper they may do the same thing, but in reality they may differ quite wildly.. These cases never get down to source code and flow charts and architectures because those are "trade secrets"... but cornerstone to the case of patent infringement.

Shut down the "plaintiff's paradise"

[Locke2005]

If we changed the licenses (e.g. GPL) to specifically forbid the distribution or use of the software in East Texas, would patent trolls still be able to file lawsuits there? It seems to me the "patent plaintiff-friendly" court's business plan has a serious design flaw...

A Trend, TomTom, RedHat Guitiarez

[omb]

There is a distinct sense of __non__coincedence__ in the air, the stink of M$ and rotten US corporatism and lack of effective regulation and enforcement of honest transparent business practices.

In spite of what Rob Endele has said this is enemy action, "Once is coincedence ..."

The US legal system, as I have said before, needs to brace up and get its act together on vexatious corporate litigation and to adopt the 'Costs in cause' rule so small defendants with a strong case will always defend. I look to senior academic lawyers, and the appelate benches of the Federal Appeal Circuit and the Supreme Court, which does not require legislation or a specific case but can be delt with by practice direction, to take a lead on this.

Those responsible for business competitiveness, especially in the EU need to do more. At minimum re-opening the M$ anti-trust investigations which I hope TomTom press for, from the Netherands. The State Attorneys and US Justice Department should also re-open the Anti-Trust suit compliance issue, especially after the discovered and proven complicity of M$ in the meritless SCO litigation.

The EU should also raise this as a WTO issue. Indeed the rational reaction is to say to US "We will hold all enforcement and co-operation on IP issues until you have reformed your broken Patent and Copyright systems" and stand firmly against term extension as the rest of the world needs the innovation effect of time limited IP rights. We should no-longer tolerate the East Texas fiasco and put as much back pressure on the US to end this legal corruption, which is, by no-means, too strong a description.

This can be effected by amicus-curia briefs by Commerce and Justice and by making it clear to these judges that all their decisions will be appealed until they resign or retire. They have done enough damage.

And no, after the Economic Crisis largely created by US corporate malfeasance, greed and lack of transperency the rest of the world needs to say 'enough' loudly, and refuse to toady or further pander to the economic nonsense, from the lunatic right, in Washington, which has done so much to damage the world economy.

Re:A Trend, TomTom, RedHat Guitiarez

[Ninnle Labs, LLC]

He's simply pointing out that it's an eerie coincidence that Microsoft is suing TomTom for linux code, and that this company is suing a Linux shop for O/R mapping at the same time.

What exactly is the coincidence? That they happen to be one of thousands upon thousands of Microsoft partners?

This patent troll could have filed suit against any number of companies, including Apple, Sun or Oracle all of which sell JavaEE middle tiers and make far more money on them.

Hahaha fail. They already did file suit last year against Oracle over the exact same issue : www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuit.asp?id=35286

# April 8 # Software Tree LLC vs. Oracle Corp. Plaintiff Software Tree claims it is the owner of U.S. Patent No. 6,163,776 issued Dec. 19, 2000, for a System and Method for Exchanging Data and Commands Between an Object Oriented System and Relational System. The original complaint states the '776 Patent was subject to a reexamination by the U.S. Patent Office which confirmed the patentability of all claims and amended some claims. The reexamination concluded on April 8, 2008. Software Tree claims that Oracle has infringed the '776 Patent through products including the Oracle TopLink. "Defendant has actual knowledge of the '776 Patent, and actual knowledge that the Oracle product known as Oracle TopLink product, and all other Oracle products that include TopLink, infringe the '776 Patent," the original complaint states. The plaintiff claims Oracle's knowledge is evidenced by correspondence dating back to early 2004 between Oracle and the inventor of the '776 Patent, who is also the president and CEO of Software Tree. "Instead of properly taking a license to the '776 Patent, Oracle engaged in a series of unsuccessful attempts to invalidate the '776 Patent through numerous meritless filings of ex-parte reexamination of the '776 Patent," the complaint states. "Despite its actual knowledge of the '776 Patent and its infringement of same, Oracle has continued to engage in its infringing conduct without a license." As a result of Oracle's alleged acts of infringement, Software Tree claims it has and will continue to sustain substantial damages in an amount not presently known. Software Tree is seeking injunctive relief, damages, lost profits, expenses, costs, attorneys' fees, treble damages, interest and other just and proper relief. Jeffrey Bragalone of Shore Chan Bragalone LLP in Dallas is attorney in charge for the plaintiff. Court assignment is pending. Case No. 6:08-cv-126

Oh well, I guess that blows your coincidence theory out of the water, eh?

Why did they pick RedHat? It smells fishy.

Only because you are apparently ignorant of prior history do things look fishy.

It covers almost everything

[Corson]

"exchanging data and commands between an object oriented system and a relational system." -- that covers pretty much every OOP sofware that communicates with a database. If it's not a joke, how could such a patent be issued in the first place?

Re:TopLink

[Ninnle Labs, LLC]

Actually this same company already filed suit against Oracle claiming that TopLink violated their patents. http://www.setexasrecord.com/news/210664-recent-patentcopyright-infringement-cases-filed-in-u.s.-district-courts

Software Tree claims that Oracle has infringed the '776 Patent through products including the Oracle TopLink.

"Defendant has actual knowledge of the '776 Patent, and actual knowledge that the Oracle product known as Oracle TopLink product, and all other Oracle products that include TopLink, infringe the '776 Patent," the original complaint states.

Re:Apparently they didn't learn anything from SCO

[Ninnle Labs, LLC]

Do you have a single shred of evidence for your claim other than a quote from the summary which intentionally eliminated the following part that shows they are also partners of Borland, Sun and IBM? It's amazing how easily so many people fall for these summaries that manipulate quotes from the article they post about to make it seem like Microsoft is always involved when the only connection between the two is the fact that Software Tree, LLC happens to have the less than unique distinction of being a Microsoft partner (a title that thousands of other corporations have also paid for).