Mark Webbink On the Settlement
by T. Colin Dodd
Former Red Hat Counsel Mark Webbink and Duke Law professor offers his take on the Red hat patent Settlement
Although I had to repress my initial gag reflex at even settling these cases (the amount of prior art identified against the original patent asserted by FireStar was/is almost mind boggling), the settlement is a rational response to such claims. Red Hat disposed of the claims in a fiscally responsible manner given the cost of patent litigation. However, that is the far less interesting aspect of the settlement. The truly admirable part of the settlement were the terms that Red Hat and its legal team extracted from DataTern and its financial backers. Not only did Red Hat obtain license terms that protect its products, including Hibernate, it did so in a manner that I believe is entirely consistent with both versions of the GPL. That is no small feat. And we are not talking about a Microsoft/Novell style license. On top of that, Red Hat didn’t stop with the asserted patents; they made sure that DataTern and its portfolio of patents aren’t going to be a problem for Red Hat and its licensees for a long time to come.
Here are some videos about software patents that Mark made with Red Hat just before he moved on to academia.
Mark Webbink On: Software Patents
Mark Webbink On: The Red Hat Patent Promise.
Mark Webbink + Alan Cox On The Red Hat Patent Promise
June 13th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
It would be really helpful for users of your operating systems if all your multimedia was published in open formats.
July 6th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
I agree with the previous comment. The Gnash player doesn’t seem to like these videos, and an open-standards format would be preferred.