Red Hat CEO hates patent trolls, but says sometimes you just have to pay up (Network World)

Posted May 5, 2011 22:19 UTC (Thu) by wahern (subscriber, #37304)
In reply to: Red Hat CEO hates patent trolls, but says sometimes you just have to pay up (Network World) by stumbles
Parent article: Red Hat CEO hates patent trolls, but says sometimes you just have to pay up (Network World)

Just because they pay off trolls doesn't mean they're not fighting the system by lobbying Congress. But you can't fight the patent system through the courts. We lost that fight with Bilski. We saw how far SCOTUS was willing to reel in the system, and it wasn't nearly far enough to rid us of the plague of software patents. They rejected a ruling that would have done exactly that, and more-or-less stated explicitly that software patents are here to stay. So that means that Red Hat isn't conceding anything by looking to their bottom line on a per claim basis.

I'd be interested to know how many claims are settled in lieu of trial in other patent areas, such as the pharmaceutical or chemicals industries. I wouldn't be surprised if the rate is roughly similar across the board. There's an equilibrium price based on a lot of factors, so it's not a slippery slope to being completely fleeced by trolls. Red Hat knows what they're doing.

Red Hat CEO hates patent trolls, but says sometimes you just have to pay up (Network World)

Posted May 6, 2011 14:28 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, SCOTUS ruled that mathematical patents are not allowed. They also ruled that software patents MAY be allowed, IF they are different from mathematical patents.

THAT is where FLOSS failed - the proponents did not succeed in convincing SCOTUS that "software == maths". That battle hasn't been lost though, it just hasn't been won.

There's probably far fewer "problems" in the pharmaceutical and engineering world, mainly because it's a lot easier for a startup to do a pre-emptive patent search. There's less out there to be surprised by.

Hopefully Google is going to rewrite all the Oracle patent claims in Haskell :-) and that SHOULD be the end of software patents :-)

Cheers,
Wol

Red Hat CEO hates patent trolls, but says sometimes you just have to pay up (Network World)

Posted May 7, 2011 1:17 UTC (Sat) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]

Bilski didn't rule anything at all related to software. The commentary was literally "this ain't a software case so we ain't ruling on software patents here."