Not to rain on pubpat's parade, but it's just a battle,
not the war. Monsanto now gets to timely respond to the
rejections and may amend their claims to preserve the patents.
There's a long way to go.
FWIW: I do practice patent law (just haven't gotten it right
yet)
As written, this make it sound as if the FSF were conspiring to commit tortious interference with Novell's extant praxis... I suspect they're a bit too savvy for it to be this simple.
There does not appear to be any GPLv2 7 problem, because there's no license, just a covenant not to sue. Novell could, at this point, hand-on-heart say they are unaware of any royalties due on the code they distribute ( 2(b)).
This gives rise to an interesting situation -- given the Novell/uSoft covenant, Novell, were Microsoft to bring successful suit against another and be awarded royalties, would become the ONLY entity that COULD distribute these works.
Something tells me that with the lawyer count at uSoft and Novell not being small, they're only too-well aware of the value of the agreement as written, save the bad press (and costing Novell the services of one Jeremy Allison).
Without his Reality Distortion Field, people will figure out they sell high-priced doodads they can get elsewhere for less. No magic -- just a really effective salesman.
I thought I recognized the names of the attornies active in the
later prosecution of the patents-at-suit and the attorneys filing
the suit. Hoffman, Lisa and Hosier were part of the Lemelson foundation
lawsuit gang that siphoned a LOT of money out of the barcode industry
before the patents were declared invalid.
Laches won't be of much help; the asserted patent (the '963) was granted 3-Oct-2006.
Worse, the prosecution history shows they requested a prompt issuance to, if memory
serves, "assist in their licensing activities."
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Not to rain on pubpat's parade, but it's just a battle, not the war. Monsanto now gets to timely respond to the rejections and may amend their claims to preserve the patents. There's a long way to go. FWIW: I do practice patent law (just haven't gotten it right yet)
As written, this make it sound as if the FSF were conspiring to commit tortious interference with Novell's extant praxis... I suspect they're a bit too savvy for it to be this simple. There does not appear to be any GPLv2 7 problem, because there's no license, just a covenant not to sue. Novell could, at this point, hand-on-heart say they are unaware of any royalties due on the code they distribute ( 2(b)). This gives rise to an interesting situation -- given the Novell/uSoft covenant, Novell, were Microsoft to bring successful suit against another and be awarded royalties, would become the ONLY entity that COULD distribute these works. Something tells me that with the lawyer count at uSoft and Novell not being small, they're only too-well aware of the value of the agreement as written, save the bad press (and costing Novell the services of one Jeremy Allison).
Without his Reality Distortion Field, people will figure out they sell high-priced doodads they can get elsewhere for less. No magic -- just a really effective salesman.
I thought I recognized the names of the attornies active in the later prosecution of the patents-at-suit and the attorneys filing the suit. Hoffman, Lisa and Hosier were part of the Lemelson foundation lawsuit gang that siphoned a LOT of money out of the barcode industry before the patents were declared invalid.
Laches won't be of much help; the asserted patent (the '963) was granted 3-Oct-2006. Worse, the prosecution history shows they requested a prompt issuance to, if memory serves, "assist in their licensing activities."