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

Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat

Posted Nov 22, 2006 14:57 UTC (Wed) by wookey (subscriber, #5501)
In reply to: Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat by dion
Parent article: Novell, buyer's remorse, and the patent threat

'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.

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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.''