Red Hat's options are limited

Posted Jul 13, 2006 6:25 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

So does Mozilla. So does Jboss. So does most of the software you use. That's why the system is so broken. You can't avoid violating patents.

You could hire a army of lawyers to go over your code with a paraniod comb and you would still likely be taken to court if somebody felt like taking you to court. Plus if it does turn out that you violated patents the simple act of examing patent documentation can triple your damages! If the court suspects (civil case has different rules then criminal) you knowingly violated a patent that should of known about then it's triple the damages.

That's why it's stupid for some kernel developer to go and try to avoid violating patents. If your caught violating patents without knowledge of patents then you get X damages. If it looks like you searched for patent violations, but looked like you skipped some then it's 3(X) damages.

It's so screwed up.

The only way big companies like IBM and Microsoft can survive is that they own hundreds of patents each. If some software company sues them, then Microsoft or IBM can turn around a destroy them in a heartbeat by raining counter lawsuites down on them.

Then to protect themselves against major company being sued by major company they just do a crapload of cross licensing deals.

The only reason small businesses and open source software survives is because they are too small or too poor to care about. That is, until recently.

The major damage is real patent trolls (which this company isn't since they actually make software and thus is liabled to be sued right back by the patent pool companies have setup for open source software). These guys don't produce software so they don't violate patents.

People like Eolas/University of California who successfully sued Microsoft. The only reason they get away with it is because they don't produce anything themselves. They are parasites.

Those are the ambulance chasers that open source folks should be most scared of because the 'patent pool' technique won't protect you from them.

As for the Redhat thing, I doubt seriously it will ever go to court. It will be settled. Maybe even have that company's own patents being added to the 'patent pool' thingy. If that happens I would not be suprised at all.

Note that it's virtually impossible to defeat a patent. The courts all the way up to the supreme court have shown a huge bias towards patent litigators. If you take them to court you have a 90% chance of loosing.