A patent lawsuit against GNOME

[Posted September 25, 2019 by corbet]

A company called Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC has filed a lawsuit [PDF] against the GNOME Foundation, alleging that the Shotwell photo manager violates patent 9,936,086. Stay tuned, more details will surely emerge.

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A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 16:33 UTC (Wed) by moltonel (subscriber, #45207) [Link]

Patent was filed in 2008 and is about wirelessly (wifi/bluetooth/etc) connecting an "image capturing device" (webcam/phone) with a "receiving device" (computer) and selectively (date, location, image recognition...) transmitting them.

Color me unimpressed. File it in the "how was this patent ever granted, even 11 years ago" bin. https://xkcd.com/827/

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 16:37 UTC (Wed) by luto (subscriber, #39314) [Link]

How could this possibly apply to Shotwell? I am not a lawyer, but:

> An image-capturing mobile device, comprising

Shotwell is not an image-capturing device.

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 16:49 UTC (Wed) by adam820 (subscriber, #101353) [Link]

The whole thing is pretty vague. The "invention" doesn't seem to be a physical device, just the idea that a capturing device could include (but not limited to) GPS information, and the consuming device (which may or may not be a PDA, computer, or other device) could take it in, or not, based on that information. The consuming device may or may not have an LCD of any size, may or may not have storage that may or may not be USB, Firewire...

The whole thing seems to want to encompass the idea of an application sorting photos based on metadata, which seems like it would have been a thing somewhere prior to 2008. Geotagging isn't that new of a concept, I don't think?

F-Spot as prior art?

Posted Sep 25, 2019 16:58 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

Shotwell's predecessor (F-Spot) had equivalent "wireless" functionality at least two years before this patent was first applied for.

(But yeah, this whole thing is a bit of a head-scratcher..)

F-Spot as prior art?

Posted Sep 25, 2019 18:56 UTC (Wed) by jg (subscriber, #17537) [Link]

Such prior art can result in invalidation of a patent, once litigated.

We faced that some years ago with some patents originally taken out by Xerox; the owners ended up suing RH & SuSE, among others, specifically as they included X Window System code (the trolls wanted to tax every commercial Linux distro on the planet.

At trial, we were able to show prior art for their claims; the defense council carried in an Amiga, and demo'ed stuff from it. I was able to dig through X Window System archives and identify exactly which lines showed prior art. And there was other evidence from other graphics systems.

The result was the invalidation of those patents; the trolls lost the case, ***and*** lost the patents.

Make sure that such prior art are brought to the attention of counsel....

F-Spot as prior art?

Posted Sep 25, 2019 18:59 UTC (Wed) by jg (subscriber, #17537) [Link]

Oh, and it's hard to argue that F-Spot was not "published" (nor X in our case). The beauty of Open Source :-).

The patent office issues invalid patents every day, worse luck...

F-Spot as prior art?

Posted Sep 27, 2019 7:27 UTC (Fri) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link]

As long as the patent office can conveniently make money by issuing invalid patents, they will do so.

F-Spot as prior art?

Posted Sep 27, 2019 17:41 UTC (Fri) by jg (subscriber, #17537) [Link]

Exactly... They lose nothing when they issue invalid patents. The incentives in the patent system are wrong...

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 17:12 UTC (Wed) by gb7djk (guest, #122859) [Link]

But every Android and Apple mobile phone definitely is. But perhaps they are trying their luck with some apparently low hanging fruit for some funds to go after people with bigger pockets?

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 17:42 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

I suspect the plantiffs will discover that the GNOME foundation was a poor choice for a "low-hanging target"

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 20:57 UTC (Wed) by geoffbeier (guest, #123670) [Link]

It's all relative. They're lower-hanging than Apple or Google.

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 21:48 UTC (Wed) by troy.unrau (guest, #73654) [Link]

Can't speak for Gnome, but at KDE, we had a good relationship with google when I was working on it. We could very well call in some big guns if we were hit with something similar. I can only assume that the Gnome Foundation is equally well connected. If nothing else, Gnome implies Redhat implies IBM.

The thing about open source projects of this scale: people who contribute a lot tend also to have successful careers somewhere. They get head hunted. A project like Gnome probably has contributors working at dozens of major software companies. And some of these people will have pull. Attacking a big open source project brings friends in from all over.

No, my best guess is that this patent troll tries to drop the lawsuit before the trial to avoid having their patent invalidated. It would be in the interests of both Gnome, and any heavy hitters they bring in, to get the judge to refuse to drop it, in order to ensure that it is invalidated. But, East Texas...

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 26, 2019 5:59 UTC (Thu) by neilm (subscriber, #28422) [Link]

I'm not going to comment on strategy at this point, but for clarification - the suit is on California this time, not Texas

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 26, 2019 12:48 UTC (Thu) by zoobab (guest, #9945) [Link]

Let's hope the GNOME foundation will use the Alice jurisprudence to invalidate this software patent.

And go on strike to protest the efforts of IBM and other trolls to abolish Alice with a law to restore software patents in the US:

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/strengthen-free-softw...

I hope with the departure of RMS that the FSF will get out of the forest and start a mass protest.

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 27, 2019 19:01 UTC (Fri) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link]

It's charming how you equate IBM with patent trolls, and – at the same time – troy.unrau equates IBM with GNOME (patent trolls victim) in nearby comment.

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 28, 2019 12:32 UTC (Sat) by sytoka (guest, #38525) [Link]

Come in Europe, no software patent here ;-)

USA is now a former software country... Come back to the new continent!

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 28, 2019 15:09 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

There are no LEGAL software patents in the US, either.

I think you will find there are *plenty* of software patents here in Europe.

Just because they're illegal doesn't stop the EPO from granting them, just like it doesn't stop the USPTO.

Cheers,
Wol

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 29, 2019 14:28 UTC (Sun) by sytoka (guest, #38525) [Link]

I do not remember having a single lawsuit concerning software patents in Europe. Parliament voted against several times!

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 30, 2019 17:56 UTC (Mon) by rschroev (subscriber, #4164) [Link]

It seems there have been a number of court cases: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_...

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 17:15 UTC (Wed) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link]

> Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC

Convenient when companies advertise their patent troll status right in their name, rather than pretending they have some useful function.

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 17:40 UTC (Wed) by Polynka (subscriber, #129183) [Link]

>Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC
>Rothschild

Don’t tell 4chan about this…

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 27, 2019 17:15 UTC (Fri) by sourcejedi (guest, #45153) [Link]

To attempt to paraphrase MetaFilter:

There's plenty of racism out there in the world. There's no need to generate more of it, by speculating what outright racists would say. However easy it might be guess. It ends up confronting people affected by racism with more of it.

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 18:13 UTC (Wed) by asn (subscriber, #62311) [Link]

There is a great talk from Andrew Tridgell: Patent defence for free software

Start there :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NCOIGFSNNA

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 19:13 UTC (Wed) by schuyler_t (subscriber, #91921) [Link]

Looks like they're suing everyone. Classic troll.

There's also:

Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC v. Cyberlink.com Corp. (3:19-cv-05438)
Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC v. QNAP Inc. (2:19-cv-06164)
Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC v. Pinterest, Inc. (2:17-cv-00287)
Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC v. Piximity, LLC (1:2019-cv-00996)
Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC v. Magix Computer Products International Co. (2:19-cv-01610)

And that was just the first page of Google when searching "Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC"

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 27, 2019 6:12 UTC (Fri) by maxfragg (subscriber, #122266) [Link]

take a look at the patents he filed and it becomes pretty obvious, that this is a pure patent troll, every single patent is vaguely describing widely deployed technology in very imprecise way:

https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Leigh+M.+Rothschild

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 25, 2019 19:32 UTC (Wed) by flussence (subscriber, #85566) [Link]

They picked a bad time to engage in patent trolling, what with the imminent violent revolution against unchecked capitalism and all. They'd better pray that shell company is watertight.

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 26, 2019 12:17 UTC (Thu) by codetrapper (guest, #134640) [Link]

Lmao, oh no. Sounds terrifying!

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 26, 2019 8:28 UTC (Thu) by sjvn (guest, #19124) [Link]

This is like all patent troll lawsuits. The troll goes after everyone and anyone who _might_ be vulnerable and hope they pay off. The logic is that an average patent defense case will cost, the last I checked in 2014, $820,000, and rather than pay that a small company will fold and pay up. It works well enough that patent trolls continue to do very well: The bastards.

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Sep 26, 2019 16:53 UTC (Thu) by jejb (subscriber, #6654) [Link]

Actually the Rothschild MO is to use submarine patenting techniques to enlarge the claims to cover a broad range of current practice, form an LLC to pursue the actions, file in East Texas, try to settle for less than the cost of defending the litigation and dismiss the lawsuit if anyone defends to avoid sanction or invalidation of the patent.

This behaviour actually got a previous LLC set up by Leigh Rothschild an adverse award of defendant's attorney fees:

https://blogs.findlaw.com/technologist/2017/06/stupid-pat...

Since it looks like the behaviour in this case is pretty similar, I'd say following the way ADS defended the previous case would be the best way to get this person to go away

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Oct 22, 2019 20:27 UTC (Tue) by valarauca (guest, #109490) [Link]

Old-Money Lawyers try to litigate a patent that should have never been granted in a US-Court-System (9^th circuit) who's had some of the sanest software rulings to date (in relation to American Software copyright/patent laws which are pretty crazy).

I get greed is a thing, but seems kind of stupid. They could atleast litigate it in Texas. Hopefully should be a slam dunk for The Gnome Foundation Lawyers.

A patent lawsuit against GNOME

Posted Oct 23, 2019 19:39 UTC (Wed) by bfields (subscriber, #19510) [Link]

I thought this changed recently: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/patent-cases-in-east-texas-plunge-more-than-60-percent/