An additional note

Posted Oct 12, 2007 20:29 UTC (Fri) by kripkenstein (guest, #43281)
In reply to: An additional note by ajross
Parent article: Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat and Novell - Just Like Ballmer Predicted (Groklaw)

> So now they've gone and sued Red Hat and Novell: two companies who are required (by virtue of the license under which they received their software -- patent license fees constitute "extra conditions" under the GPL) to fight this to the death. Either they win and IP Innovation loses their patent, or they lose and have to pull the feature (virtual desktops, apparently?) out of the US versions of the distributions.

Hmm, that is a good point. So, if a patent troll holds a crucial patent - to something that if you pull the feature, your OS is useless - then Red Hat, Novell, etc. are out of options, but to stop selling Linux? (assuming they lose the fight)

If so then commercial Linux seems highly vulnerable in the US and other software-patent-granting areas (and perhaps community Linux as well, to a lesser degree). I hope I am missing something?

An additional note

Posted Oct 12, 2007 22:12 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link]

As somebody else has suggested above, Red Hat can buy the patent and put it in the public domain (or give it to OIN). Alternatively they can work around the patent so their product does not infringe anymore (even if they have to settle for their previous use). Or IBM and OIN and other powerful friends can convince them to forgive about the patent: even if the company has no products I bet they can be sued for a lot of things (and IBM can darken the skies with lawyers of whatever dirty hole they come out of). All of this is considering that the patent is really valid; a stronger argument is to invalidate the patent.

Some day somebody will find an unavoidable patent that is valid beyond doubt and all Linux distributors are found to infringe, like "method and apparatus for writing a monolithic kernel in C" (filed in 1981), or something. That day there will be a big party at Microsoft HQ. I would bet that GNU/Linux is so big nowadays that this patent would lead to a huge patent reform. Until that moment we can only speculate, and fight software patents in Europe.