Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat [LWN.net]

Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat

Posted Nov 22, 2006 9:29 UTC (Wed) by dion (subscriber, #2764) [Link]

I don't think it's all that bad.

The junk patents are easy to refute and all you'd really need to do is show up with prior art.

Some patents might cover stuff that's been independently developed in OSS, so there is no prior art, those are the annoying cases where you rewrite the software to not use the neat trick the patent forbids.

As far as I'm aware a patent troll wouldn't get any damages awared to them if they didn't try to solve the problem without the courts first.

Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat

Posted Nov 22, 2006 12:19 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Evidence tells otherwise. Refuting these patents can be very expensive, especially if there are many included. The patent trolls sets a licensing fee just under the cost of taking it to court, then attacks another company. What are you to do?

Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat

Posted Nov 22, 2006 14:57 UTC (Wed) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]

'All you need is prior art'

And a great deal of money. Usually hundreds of thousands to get even the most egregious suit thrown out, but certainly tens of thousands even if done on the cheap. See the JRMI project for an example of what happens when the tech in a Free Software project is patented _after_ they published it, then the patent is used to sue them. This case shows criminal behaviour by the agressors, and outrageous copyright infringement as well as an attempted patent-leveraged hold-up, but still the bad guys are winning in court so far, and the project is spending serious money.

If it isn't trivial to win in this case then imagine what it's like if the patent owners did actually do their own work in parallel with or before the Free Software project's.

Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat

Posted Nov 30, 2006 22:52 UTC (Thu) by aquasync (subscriber, #26654) [Link]

Wow. I hadn't heard about this project.

Thats really disappointing to see how badly the courts are working.

I'm just amazed by this quote:

``In it, he doesn't argue that Katzer didn't copy the JMRI software in violation of the copyright terms, probably because even HE can't stretch the truth that far. Instead, he argues that copyright doesn't protect free and open source (FOSS) software! You can read the entire argument in the motion filed with the court, in particular the section named "Plaintiff has waived his ability to sue under the Copyright Act" starting on page 13. Basically, it says that since JMRI makes the software available on the web, free of charge (although not free of restriction), when someone like Katzer takes it and uses it in violation of those restrictions, we can sue him in contract law only, if at all. The shocking part of Katzer's argument is that he says we have no rights under either copyright or contract to enforce.''

Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat

Posted Nov 23, 2006 14:09 UTC (Thu) by Liefting (subscriber, #8466) [Link]

Even if some, or most of the patents are indeed junk and are easily (but expensively) refuted through prior art, I think that some of the Microsoft patents are really defendable. Microsoft *did* come up with original ideas, and that's what patents are supposed to protect.

One of the things that could conceivably be covered by a whole load of *legitimate* (not in the legal sense, but in the "honest" sense) MS patents would be Microsoft networking. Especially the combination of TCP/IP, NetBIOS, SMB, Active Directory, Kerberos and a few other things that all tied together in a specific way provide something called 'Single Signon' to all sorts of servers. There are some really clever ideas there which I doubt you'd be able to find prior art (working implementations) for.

The obvious piece of OSS software that would be impacted by this is Samba, but the smbfs filesystem is part of the Linux kernel as well. Easily ripped out though, but still...

MIT's project Athena

Posted Nov 23, 2006 17:12 UTC (Thu) by scottt (subscriber, #5028) [Link]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Athena

MIT's project Athena, which the Kerberos authentication system originated from likely has prior art to all the functionality you listed.

Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat

Posted Nov 23, 2006 21:48 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Having the source code viewable does not make free software more vulnerable than proprietary software. As you can see in the example shown in the article, problematic patents are not so detailed that someone would need source code to determine an infringement.

Indeed, free software is less vulnerable in some ways. For one example, anyone can remove a patented feature. With proprietary software, if a court rules that the software violates a patent, users of that software have to either continue using it and leave themselves vulnerable to patent litigation, or stop using the software completey.

With free software, anyone can publish a version of the software with the patented feature removed, so users have the third option of continuing to use the software but the patented feature removed - so they are not vulnerable.

Oh balderdash!

Posted Nov 24, 2006 15:39 UTC (Fri) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link]

Be specific. Who would kill Linux, and how would they do it?

By suing over a patent? Name some hypothetical idiot who would sue, and name who they would sue. Explain how this could possibly kill Linux.

Would they sue Linus Torvalds?

Would they sue IBM? RedHat? You? Me?

Would you stop using Linux because someone else got sued? Would anyone else? Would businesses around the country suddenly stop using Linux?

Would the rest of the world even care if someone in the US sued somebody else in the US over Linux?

Unless you can provide even a hint of specificity, you are either panicing out of ignorance or Darl McBride.