Sun invalidates the Firestar patent [LWN.net]

Mike Dillon, Sun's general counsel, has put up a weblog entry describing that company's efforts to invalidate the Firestar patent - the one Red Hat just licensed. "These things take time, but last week, we received a response from the PTO in the form of an office action rejecting all of the claims in the patent based on the prior art submitted by Sun. Obviously, we are delighted to get this validation from the PTO. Firestar has two months to overcome this rejection, but given what we presented to the PTO, we believe it will be a challenge for them." (Thanks to Mike Gerdts).

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Nice double whammy

Posted Jul 12, 2008 14:41 UTC (Sat) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link] (2 responses)

Wow, that must hurt (haha, bad patent troll). So first Red Hat made sure Free Software
projects upstream and downstream from them were protected against any legal patent actions of
Firestart (and DataTern). And now Sun is trying to kill off one of their most obnoxious
patents (the one that started it all). So not only is the Free Software community protected
from all patents through the Red Hat deal. Now Firestar will probably even not be able to
assert that patent against proprietary software vendors. Man, it must suck to be a patent
troll dreaming of making big bucks :)

Although I guess it must have been cheaper for Red Hat if this invalidation would have
actually happened sooner.

Nice double whammy

Posted Jul 12, 2008 14:56 UTC (Sat) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] (1 responses)

It's going to be VERY expensive for Red Hat, because now they've sent out the signal that
they're the gullible fools to hit up before your patent gets whacked down.  Maybe Red Hat can
afford to pay off one troll, but what happens for all the rest that will be soon knocking on
their doors?

Software companies have to deal with patent trolls the same way Jack Bauer deals with
terrorists: no surrender, no compromise, no mercy.  I don't even think the torture is
necessarily off the table in this case.  ;)

Nice double whammy

Posted Jul 12, 2008 15:47 UTC (Sat) by mjw (subscriber, #16740) [Link]

I assume that the patent consortium made the broad upstream/downstream shielding of free
software projects deal for all their patents to prevent Red Hat from invalidation that one
patent in court. Only to find out when it was too late that Red Hat and Sun had already
exchanged the information to get the patent thrown out anyway.

But yeah, it depends on who thought they made the best deal in the first place. It looks to me
the free software community got broad protection from a range of patents from
Firestar/DataTern/Amphion through the deal and then the troll still got one of its essential
patents invalidated. But without financial detail from Red Hat we will indeed never know if it
was brave or foolish of them.

Refunds

Posted Jul 12, 2008 16:04 UTC (Sat) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link] (3 responses)

Would Red Hat now be eligible for a refund on whatever it has bought?  There must have been a
contract which says somewhere that the patent was owned by the company and now that's no
longer true (or will be once the appeals go through and get knocked down), won't that be the
equivalent of not having kept their side of the deal?

It's like SCO "licensing" Linux.  If it turns out that they don't actually own anything to
license in Linux, then a lot of people will be turning up because they haven't kept up their
end of the contract.  It depends a lot on the small print, I should think, but let's hope this
question is resolved quicker than the SCO deal and that Red Hat has good lawyers and is,
indeed, entitled to its money back now.

Refunds

Posted Jul 12, 2008 20:10 UTC (Sat) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (2 responses)

Probably there will be no refund; it would depend on the terms of the deal.

Refunds

Posted Jul 13, 2008 4:17 UTC (Sun) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link] (1 responses)

And most importantly there was never a statement that money changed hands at all. 

I always took the settlement to be the company backing down completely based on evidence
Redhat showed them. In fact I saw the taking of the patent license to every patent in their
portfolio to be a statement that Redhat had some nasty evidence that resulted in the payoff to
Redhat of a full patent license for all of open source for every patent in their portfolio to
prevent Redhat from taking that evidence to the patent office. 

All sun has now done is take the same evidence to the patent office and invalidate the patent
while open source is still protected from all the other patents. If anything it tells patent
trolls that they better watch out when trying to assert patent's against the community.

Refunds

Posted Jul 14, 2008 15:12 UTC (Mon) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]

Now that does make a lot of sense.  I couldn't see Red Hat paying Danegeld for a patent they
could prove was bogus; it just didn't seem in character for Red Hat, not to mention being
extremely poor strategy.  After all, once you pay Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.

On the other hand, bargaining for patent protection from the troll company in exchange for not
invalidating the patent they were using to threaten Red Hat?  That I can see quite easily.
Very clever, too.

Here comes Theo in three ... two ... one ...

Posted Jul 12, 2008 20:13 UTC (Sat) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] (4 responses)

I'm sure we're going to hear from Theo soon, attacking Red Hat for accepting a deal that applied only to GPL works instead of standing firm.

Perhaps Sun managed to find some prior art that Red Hat didn't. On the other hand, I don't recall Red Hat asking the community for help; perhaps they were afraid of the FUD if word got out that they were under attack from a patent troll.

Here comes Theo in three ... two ... one ...

Posted Jul 12, 2008 21:00 UTC (Sat) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

It's quite possible that it's simply a fact that Sun has better lawyers then Redhat!

All in all it's fantastic news that a patent troll bit the dust, at least on this patent. Good
job Sun!

Here comes Theo in three ... two ... one ...

Posted Jul 14, 2008 15:24 UTC (Mon) by southey (guest, #9466) [Link]

The big difference here was that it was Red Hat being sued not Sun. Also, Sun was most likely
also being proactive to avoid a potential lawsuit against themselves. 

Perhaps too much Groklaw, but the settlement was probably the best option to Red Hat than a
longer lawsuit that may have occurred if Red Hat actually challenged the patent. This news is
also most likely a factor in the resolution of the Red Hat suit.

Here comes Theo in three ... two ... one ...

Posted Jul 12, 2008 23:55 UTC (Sat) by salimma (subscriber, #34460) [Link] (1 responses)

The deal shielded all upstream vendors of Red Hat, which includes the OpenBSD project (at
least as far as OpenSSH and OpenSSL are concerned). It's in no way GPL only.

(I quite agree that it's not necessarily a good deal -- one wonders if Red Hat lawyers knew
what Sun was up to, or the latter intentionally kept them in the dark)

Here comes Theo in three ... two ... one ...

Posted Jul 13, 2008 1:26 UTC (Sun) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]

> one wonders if Red Hat lawyers knew what Sun was up to

The article goes out of its way to tell us that they did keep RedHat informed.  Which makes it
seem more peculiar to me.

The dreaded homonym strikes again

Posted Jul 12, 2008 21:58 UTC (Sat) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (3 responses)

He's their general counsel. A council is something entirely different.

The dreaded homonym strikes again

Posted Jul 13, 2008 0:43 UTC (Sun) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link] (2 responses)

Eye wood like too bye uh read tucks, knot a blew won.

Stupid English.  ;)

The dreaded homonym strikes again

Posted Jul 13, 2008 3:16 UTC (Sun) by jgjf (guest, #26728) [Link]

Eye wood half too bye uh read tucks, knot a blew won.

;)

The dreaded homonym strikes again

Posted Jul 14, 2008 19:40 UTC (Mon) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link]

The Englese, she is the very hard language to speak.