Patent infringement suit filed against Red Hat (No Lobbyists As Such)

Patent infringement suit filed against Red Hat (No Lobbyists As Such)

Posted Jun 30, 2006 11:10 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333)
In reply to: Patent infringement suit filed against Red Hat (No Lobbyists As Such) by Zack
Parent article: Patent infringement suit filed against Red Hat (No Lobbyists As Such)

Trademarks are kinda unique.. From what I understand if you don't actively 'defend' them you can loose them.

This is why Redhat goes after people like CentOS for saying their system is based off of Redhat in their code and such. If they don't then they can potentionally loose their trademark and then anybody and their mom can call their stuff 'Redhat'.

Like for instance Microsoft could create Linux compatability mode for their Windows operating system, run a bunch of binaries built from code from Redhat's servers then they could go around and start a bunch of magazine adds talking about how they created a better Redhat operating system because now you have Redhat compatability combined with the ease of use and hardware compatability of Windows. Or some such nonsense.

And since your a diehard Debian fan you already know that Debian has it's own trademark stuff going on with rules what other people can and cannot use. :)

http://news.com.com/Debian+trademark+policy+under+questio...

To me this Redhat stuff about the execuative saying this or saying that is a bunch of hearsay. The guy that owns the blog obviously disagree's with how Redhat is dealing with this 'patent issue'.

Literally he is saying that this guy told him that this other guy told him that this guy from Redhat said that he should support the patent initiative in Europe.

I think that it's something that should be taken with a grain of salt. I am sure that Redhat has a lot of people working for it that may not share the same ideals as the founders. Even if this guy did say that software patents were a good idea we don't even know if he was representing Redhat at the time or he could of been working for somebody else or could of been using his position to espouse a personal viewpoint. Who knows?

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