Bruce Perens on Software Patent Lawsuits Against OSS
The Monster Arrives: Software Patent Lawsuits Against Open Source Developers
Bruce Perens blogs on Technocrat.net about two new lawsuits against open source software developers.
One is Red Hat for their acquisition of a smaller company, jBoss. FireStar Software is suing them for violating their patent on object-oriented databases. The second is a lawsuit by KAM against an individual developer, Bob Jacobsen. KAM claims that Jacobsen violated their broad patent on a model railroad control system by releasing his open source control software. They’re charging him $19 per copy given away.
Perens also spends a paragraph on Intellectual Ventures, which he calls a “patent shake-down operation.”
Intellectual Ventures has been purchasing patents to construct a portfolio that it will then assert against someone, probably small and medium-sized businesses to start with. Most businesses, when faced with the prospect of an expensive patent infringement lawsuit, choose to pay a license fee, or shall we call it an extortion fee, rather than go to court and spend so much that even when they win, they lose. Income from license fees will fuel more attacks on more businesses. The effect of Myhrvold’s business on Open Source could be crippling. But Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Google, and eBay have nothing to fear. They invested in the company, and will be excluded from attacks.
June 30th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
Hi,
I created a small website with MediaWiki, which is dedicated to collect Prior Art against this patent. This will help Red Hat and might prevent the same patent from beeing issued in Europe, Canada, Japan and other countries.
Let’s show the world that this wasn’t a new invention in 1998 !
http://helpredhat.dyndns.org