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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
Cato Unbound » Blog Archive » The Future of Copyright
A very condensed version of copyright history could look like this: texts (1800), works (1900), tools (2000). Originally the law was designed to regulate the use of one machine only: the printing press. It concerned the reproduction of texts, printed matter, without interfering with their subsequent uses. Roughly around 1900, however, copyright law was drastically extended to cover works, independent of any specific medium. This opened up the field for collective rights management organizations, which since have been setting fixed prices on performance and broadcasting licenses. Under their direction, very specific copyright customs developed for each new medium: cinema, gramophone, radio, and so forth. This differentiation was undermined by the emergence of the Internet, and since about the year 2000 copyright law has been pushed in a new direction, regulating access to tools in a way much more arbitrary than anyone in the pre-digital age could have imagined.
So there is quite a lot at stake, and the tide appears to be turning away from the profligate issuing of patents in such categories. At least the right questions are being asked. But to what extent will they reach a decision to modify or pull back? This case will help to decide. Of course, the Supreme Court is higher than this court, but having already given some direction, the Bilski case gives the appeals court the opportunity to undo what many view as damage by some decisions that opened the floodgates to all kinds of crazy patents. And that is why suddenly a large crowd of interested parties are submitting amicus briefs. The list at the court is impressive. Unfortunately, the court does not make the briefs digitally available, but Red Hat’s announcement says it will be on that page soon. And thankfully, Patently-O provides some descriptions of positions taken and explains the process.
EFF Asks Court to Limit What Is Patentable | Electronic Frontier Foundation
In re Bilski is an appellate court case that provides an opportunity to eliminate business method patents and curtail efforts to claim monopolies on basic human skills, behaviors, and interactions. Bilski is challenging the rejection of his application for a patent on a method of managing the risk of bad weather through commodities trading. EFF submitted an amicus brief (in conjunction with The Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley Law, Public Knowledge, and Consumers Union) supporting the rejection of Bilski’s patent application and setting forth a framework for determining patentable subject matter that focuses on the use of technology in the claimed invention.
Red Hat News | Red Hat Asks Federal Court To Limit Patents On Software
Today, Red Hat took a public stand challenging the standards for patenting software. In the Biliski case that is now before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, this patent issue is ripe for consideration. In a friend of the court brief submitted to the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in the Bilski case today, Red Hat describes the special problems that patents pose for open source and seeks modification of the standards for patentable subject matter that take open source into account. Here is a quick summary of our brief.
Open source software is one of the most dynamic, innovative sectors of the U.S. economy, but the U.S. patent system is a costly hindrance to open source innovation. We believe that although the patent system was created to foster innovation, it’s simply not an engine for innovation for open source. Software patents were barely recognized when open source began, and so the hope of obtaining a patent did not motivate the first developers. Those pioneers were generally opposed to software patents. The open, collaborative activity at the heart of open source is at odds with the patent system, which excludes the public from making, using or selling a patented invention. Open source developers seek to contribute code to the community – not to exclude others from using the code.
This is a real shame. Patent Troll Tracker was a great blog that did most of my work for me. Quite a loss.
The Daily Journal’s Tuesday edition (not linkable) reports that Troll Tracker author Rick Frenkel, and his employer Cisco, have been sued for defamation by two East Texas attorneys who are players in that district’s patent litigation scene, Eric Albritton and T. John Ward, Jr.
John “Johnny” Ward, Jr. is a Texas lawyer who has filed a large number of patent infringement lawsuits in recent years. Between January and mid-October of 2007, his name was attached to 54 separate lawsuits by my count; in all but four, he represented the plaintiff. He is also, as I reported in October, the son of Judge T. John Ward, the judge who is largely responsible for making the Eastern District of Texas a hotspot for patent litigation.
There’s a lot more on this, here.
Red Hat Puts More Muscle On Its Legal Staff — Linux — InformationWeek
Red Hat is beefing up its legal staff with two appointments to strengthen its hand in patent disputes and open source licensing issues.
Company spokesman on Wednesday declined to comment on whether Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)’s claims in early and mid-2007 that its patents cover parts of Linux had anything to do with the expansion.
“We are helping pave the way for open standards and changes in the IP regime needed for the future,” responded Robert Tiller, VP and assistant general counsel for IP, one of the new hires at Red Hat’s legal department. “We feel a responsibility to lead these efforts and to encourage projects that support open, multi-vendor standards,” he wrote in an email response.
Red Hat announced Wednesday that it was adding Tiller and Richard Fontana, a former associate of Eben Moglen at the Software Freedom Law Center, to its legal staff. Fontana will be Red Hat’s open source licensing and patent counsel.
Red Hat News | Strike One Against Microsoft
by Michael Cunningham, Executive Vice President & General Counsel
Strike One!
In our last blog posted on February 21, I proposed three test pitches for Microsoft to help judge the meaningfulness of its latest efforts to turn over a new leaf on interoperability. The first of these was to embrace the extant, multi-vendor ISO standard, ODF (Open Document Format) in lieu of its single vendor dominated efforts to create a new standard, OOXML (Office Open XML).
The first pitch was thrown in Geneva last week at the ISO ballot resolution meetings on OOXML. And we can safely say: strike one! There was no renouncement of the OOXML standard by Microsoft. Instead, every indication was business as usual.
By the way, you have to seriously wonder about those Geneva meetings. According to reports I’ve received about the meetings (which were closed but reportedly audio recorded), only a disturbing 25 or so of the approximately 1,000 substantive comments that were scheduled to be acted upon were actually discussed. As for the remainder of the comments, it appears that, in order to complete the agenda, a decision was made to vote on all of the remaining, undiscussed comments in a single vote.
Quicktime | Real
Real Stream | Ogg Theora
The death of software patents?
Wikipedia Tries Approval System to Fight Vandalism
More on GPL-compliant patent settlement
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