Liability of Users for Patent Infringement [LWN.net]

Liability of Users for Patent Infringement

Posted Apr 23, 2011 23:51 UTC (Sat) by ThinkRob (guest, #64513)
In reply to: Liability of Users for Patent Infringement by orcmid
Parent article: Google Linux servers hit with $5m patent infringement verdict (The Register)

> Yes, it means that. If this is in an essential part of the kernel, every use of Linux distribution with such a kernel would constitute an infringing operation.

> In the commercial world, providers of hardware-software systems tended to hold their customers harmless from such suits and would defend them.

Oh boy. This could be fun.

I can't wait until the patent trolls go after IBM, probably reasoning that since almost all (or maybe all?) of IBM's big iron can/does run Linux they're a good target. The mental image that such a lawsuit evokes is that of a foolish man poking a large sleeping grizzly bear. Eventually, the bear will snort a few times, bat its ears, open one eye, look sleepily around, and then simply maul the annoying guy into a small patch of red pulp.

If there's one company that I would expect to defend Linux pretty damn well, it's IBM; given their patent history I bet they could find numerous counts of infringement on their portfolio by any business, even if that business is just a shell company/patent troll. Even if they didn't have patents with which to fight back... well... what are the odds that a patent troll can outlast IBM's legal army?

Of course IANG (I Am Not Groklaw)...

to post comments

Liability of Users for Patent Infringement

Posted Apr 24, 2011 19:02 UTC (Sun) by wahern (subscriber, #37304) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, they didn't just sue Google. Here's a list of defendants from their Amended Complaint 2011-01-24. Don't infer anything about these defendants--other than Google--regarding the trial verdict.

Softlayer Technologies, Inc.,
CitiWare Technology Solutions, LLC,
Google Inc.,
Yahoo! Inc.,
MySpace Inc.,
Amazon.com Inc.,
PayPal Inc.,
Match.com, Inc.,
AOL LLC,
CME Group Inc.

Red Hat preemptively sued in 2009 for a declaratory judgment. Pacer charges per document so I can't figure out how out all of this unfolded (without paying), but here's the defendant list in Facebook's 2010-09-03 Amended Answer to Bedrock's crossclaim. I would guess these are all Red Hat customers impleaded by Bedrock.

1 & 1 Internet, Inc.,
Rackspace Hosting, Inc.,
Go Daddy Group, Inc.,
Sungard Data Systems, Inc.,
Whole Foods Market, Inc.,
The Gap, Inc.,
NYSE Euronext,
ConAgra Foods, Inc.,
Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company,
Facebook, Inc.,
ConocoPhillips Company,
Virgin America Inc., R.L. Polk & Co.,
The Planet.com Internet Services

Liability of Users for Patent Infringement

Posted Apr 24, 2011 21:58 UTC (Sun) by orcmid (guest, #74478) [Link]

The link to justia.com provided by FOSSPatents earlier on this thread provides a lot of the soap opera: http://dockets.justia.com/docket/texas/txedce/6:2009cv002...

I got tired looking through it, and I don't think one can find actual exhibits or expert testimony.

What is interesting is that some of these companies have extensive web farms for their own operations. We know that Google's uses Linux. I presume these other users do also.

It is interesting that hosting services are included. I assume because they are engaging in commerce by leasing the use of LAMP-based hosted sites, etc. So my hosting service could easily make it onto this list, not to mention sites where I am an user (Facebook, amazon.com, etc.). Ick.

I suppose free cloud services (E.g., my Amazon Cloud Drive) may not be very free for long. And we all wait patiently to learn there has been a workaround that removes the infringing code from the Linux kernel.