Nice double whammy

Posted Jul 12, 2008 14:41 UTC (Sat) by mjw (subscriber, #16740)
Parent article: Sun invalidates the Firestar patent

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.