PJ's comment when she posted this story in newspicks

Red Hat is our best ally. They've probably done more than any other company to fight software patents - much more than Canonical.

But my point is that Canonical has helped. Since most of our friends don't help at all, that makes Canonical special. We have very few helpful friends, so I hope we don't lose any.

Canonical has been fighting software patents a lot longer than that. For example, I heard Shuttleworth give a really effective speech about 3 years ago at the EUPACO2 (june 2007) 'future of software patents' EPO/EU event. Effective both because he is a very good speaker and most importantly because he represents real entrepreneurs and proper business people with millions to invest, who tend to get a better hearing from politicians that your average beardy geek. And that wasn't the first useful intervention. Since then they have been consistent good citizens both independently and via the FTF legal network.

You can be critical of their free software contributions and business practices if you like, but they have been very solid to date on swpats, and I see no reason for that to change in a hurry as MarkS is fairly vehement on the subject (as all right-thinking people should be).