First-ever patent-suit filed against Linux
Glyn sez, "A patent infringement suit has been filed against Novell and Red Hat for allegedly infringing user interface patent. The first ever patent infringement litigation involving Linux.
IP Innovation LLC filed the claim. Groklaw has more details and also tracks the flow of Microsoft employees into the company just before launching the law suit."
And now let's play, where's Microsoft? You know, like where's Waldo? Betcha he's in the tree's leaves somewhere if we look close enough. We had our first hint when Steve Ballmer said in his speech the other day that he figured other folks besides Microsoft would want Red Hat and FOSS to pay them for their patents. Remember? Is he a prophet or merely well informed? Or is there more to this? When I lay out all the research, you can decide.IP Innovation is a subsidiary of Acacia, one of the leading patent trolls in the field (they are responsible for the ridiculous patent on all forms of streaming media, a patent so ridiculous that EFF is seeking to overturn it). Now that these guys are turning into a client state of Microsoft's, who knows what kind of mischief they'll get into? Link (Thanks, Glyn)
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Cory, I'm kind of torn. I want as many people as possible to be aware of Micro$oft scheming, but that headline drew me in mostly on the basis of being wrong^H^H^H^H^Hsensationalistic. How can you sue Linux? Linux is a smart product, but not sentient! (Even if it were, there would have to be 50 years of civil rights protests to get a US court to strike down the "CARBONS ONLY" and "SILICONS ONLY" drinking fountains.)
To be fair, it the headline had read "First-ever patent-suit filed against Novell and Red Hat Linux", I would certainly have said, "Not slackware, fsck 'em." :-)
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Hmm...
Acacia gets a new VP who's ex-MS in July of 07. His job at MS? General Manager, Intellectual Property Licensing. In October of 07 an Acacia subsidiary goes after Linux.
I'm shocked, really. Totally shocked. I'm sure it's just coincidence, as Microsoft is an honest, reputable player in this space.
Microsoft: if you can't innovate, litigate.
Oh c'mon Geno; if the word "against" was replaced with "regarding," or "over," it would be accurate. Crappier, but more accurate.
The lawsuit is over software/code contained in a distribution of Linux. So, to me, the headline is fine.
Didn't Novell sign some kind of patent indemnity deal with MS a few months back? I seem to recall some sort of uproar.
Follow the link, the patent is in the first paragraph in the first callout box:
"Plaintiffs IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corp. claim to have the rights to U.S. Patent No. 5,072,412 for a User Interface with Multiple Workspaces for Sharing Display System Objects issued Dec. 10, 1991 along with two other similar patents."
Yet another BS patent that never should have been issued.
Novell signed a deal with MS, but MS isn't involved in this suit (other than a former MS exec now being an exec at this company). The Novell-MS deal doesn't mean Novell can't get sued by other companies.
It sounds like they're suing the derivatives of tvtwm? (whose ideas came from swm, anyway, widely published and distributed a couple of years before the patent was issued— but a couple of years after the patent was filed.)
The complaint claims infringement of ("at least") 5533183 claim 3 (window manager with pager), 5072412 claim 1 (ditto), and 5394521 claim 1 (pinning a window so it shows up in multiple panes).
Oops, I thought MS was the plantiff.
Acacia is just pure evil. Fortunately they don't have a very good track record of actually defending their patents in court. Surprising they'd go after Novell when they're typical m.o. is to go after smaller operations for whom the cost of litigating is typically significantly higher than the cost of settling.
redhat and novell does not equal linux
there is no lawsuit against linux
It bears repeating: this is not a patent claim against Linux, there is currently no patent claim against Linux, and there still has never been one.
This appears to be a claim regarding a GUI element which is part of a desktop suite of software often distributed with Linux by two specific companies. Whatever the merits of the case it has absolutely nothing at all to do with the Linux kernel.
A real patent claim against the Linux kernel would be extremely significant for every user of Linux, and for the IT industry as a whole. As far as can be seen from the information available here, this is not particularly significant for anyone except Red Hat and Novell.
This is not about any patents against Linux or whatever. Microsoft just tries to discredit everything that has to do with Linux in general. They want to create a level of uncertainity in people's minds about Linux so they have concerns about the legal status of the OS. If people are in doubt, they might favour Windows since there they know that they've paid for something "absolutely legal".
It would be interesting if some megacorp digged up and bought out all the patents that Microsoft ever violated ... and would come up with a thousand patent infringement suits. :->