An additional note [LWN.net]

An additional note

Posted Oct 12, 2007 20:32 UTC (Fri) by fritsd (subscriber, #43411)
In reply to: An additional note by sepreece
Parent article: Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat and Novell - Just Like Ballmer Predicted (Groklaw)

Yes, but I think the point is if they had sued Microsoft instead of Novell and Red Hat, they could have got a settlement worth millions, and Microsoft would be more likely to settle instead of "battle to the death" as pp puts it.
So why then do they sue those two companies which for them carries the same risk (losing the patent they use as a weapon) but much lower possible profit, compared to sueing Microsoft.

I haven't read the actual patent, is it likely that Microsoft just doesn't infringe it?

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An additional note

Posted Oct 12, 2007 20:55 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]

I also haven't read the patent in any detail. I think there are technical differences between the implementations and capabilities of the windowing technology in Windows versus those in X11 that *could* affect whether this patent applied, but I don't know enough about the patent to begin to guess whether that's the case.

I do agree that it seems odd to pick on the defendants they chose.