News about legal issues involving Linux, Open Source and Free Software

 Linux devs strike back at Microsoft patent claims, Jul 02, 2009

In 2007, Microsoft shook up the Linux community with claims that open source allegedly infringes on as many as 235 of Microsoft's patents. Until this year, Microsoft had not actually filed any kind of legal suits on those patents - which changed with the TomTom case.

Who says the lion can't lie down the with the lamb? The normally mortal enemies Microsoft and the Linux Foundation have signed a joint letter that argues against advice a key legal group is planning to recommend to judges regarding software licensing. I guess Microsoft and the Linux Foundation have found the only thing that they hate worse than each other --- lawyers.

The two organizations haven't been what you'd call snuggle-buddies, but they're certainly adamant about certain aspects of software enough to agree and collectively petition a legal group for redress of a document. In a somewhat surprising move, Microsoft and the Linux Foundation have joined forces in writing and signing a letter to the American Law Institute asking for the group to hold off on submitting a document entitled "Principles of the Law of Software Contracts" for adjustments.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has been one of the surprise backers of people who the RIAA thinks should pay massive fines for sharing copyrighted music files online.

Illinois developer Erich Specht, filed suit this week for trademark infringement against Google and some 47 other companies in the Open Handset Alliance. At stake are the rights to the Android name which denotes Google's version of Linux that adorns their handsets.

Open-source and Linux activists are not allowing the FAT patent dispute between Microsoft and TomTom to fade.

Is Microsoft a friend or foe of open source? Going by the company's actions, Microsoft can't seem to decide whether to make love or war. But if it's war, Microsoft appears to lack the legal weaponry to defeat or even disturb its adversaries.

Microsoft and TomTom said Monday that they have settled their respective patent infringement suits, which raised patent issues with everything from file system patents to the General Public License for open source software. Once you read the press release the next natural question is: Who caved?

Open-source software companies are missing out on a relatively inexpensive way to fight concerns about patent liability, according to an attorney who spoke at an open-source conference in San Francisco this week. More open-source companies should be asking the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office to re-examine patents that may pose a threat to them, as a cheaper, sometimes more suitable alternative to waging a patent lawsuit.

If the patents at the heart of Microsoft's action against TomTom are the best the company can do, little wonder the company has declined to identify those at the heart of its Linux threats.

TomTom, sued earlier by Microsoft for patent infringement related to GPS technology and TomTom's implementation of Microsoft's FAT, or file allocation table, technology in Linux, is fighting back. Unfortunately, its countersuit relates to four of its GPS patents that it claims Microsoft infringes, not the Linux patents that have the open-source community up in arms.

GPS maker TomTom hit back at Microsoft yesterday by issuing a countersuit against the software giant with a patent claim of its own.

Recently Red Hat has decided to go on the offensive with their patent strategy. With this patent Red Hat is attempting to patent “Method and apparatus to deliver messages between applications”.

Free software advocates are praising a federal appeals ruling on that allows greater protection for open-source software against copyright infringement.

Advocates of open source software have hailed a court ruling protecting its use even though it is given away free.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed yet another copyright infringement lawsuit on behalf of the developers of the Linux-based BusyBox utility suite. This time the lawsuit claims that networking vendor Extreme Networks violated redistribution stipulations of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has filed two more copyright infringement lawsuits on behalf of the developers of the Linux-based BusyBox utility suite.

Computer engineer Hans Reiser, known for developing the ReiserFS file system, will be sentenced in July for the killing of his wife, Nina, whose body has not been found since her disappearance.

The jury deliberating the Hans Reiser murder trial left the courthouse here about 3:15 p.m. Pacific time Thursday, its second full day of deliberations.

The most undisputed assertion in the trial of Hans Reiser, the Linux programmer accused of killing his estranged wife, is that he's a geek to the nth degree. He's been called strange, socially inept, devoid of emotion, and paranoid...and no one disagrees.

The Software Freedom Law Center filed suit against Verizon Communications in a bid to uphold the terms of the General Public License. A month later, Mark Tolliver, CEO of Palamida, said Verizon's ongoing silence is the wrong response.

Xterasys settles a suit filed by the Software Freedom Law Center regarding GPL violations involving the BusyBox tool set.

Open-source software is very attractive for companies looking to expand their services or quickly get new offerings to market, in part because it's free. Unfortunately, some companies tend to overlook the software license commonly attached to open-source software, the GPL. Verizon is the latest company to do so, and its use of an OSS package in a wireless router has led to a copyright infringement lawsuit from the Software Freedom Law Center.

The GPL is the most widely used open source license on Earth, yet it has never been tested in a U.S. courtroom.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) said it has filed suit against two companies for allegedly violating the General Public License, which covers usage of Linux and thousands of other free and open source products.

The prosecutor in the Hans Reiser murder trial concluded nearly three days of opening statements, urging jurors Thursday to convict the star Linux engineer on trial here for allegedly killing his wife.

On Oct. 30, the Software Freedom Law Center, acting on behalf of the two principal BusyBox developers, and Monsoon Multimedia jointly announced that an agreement has been reached to dismiss the GPL enforcement lawsuit, which had been filed by the SFLC.

Dimdim calls itself the world's first free Web meeting service based on an open source platform. Users can share their desktops and files while chatting and videoconferencing with meeting participants. Dimdim was originally licensed under the Mozilla Public License (MPL), but the possibility of a big deal with a university made Dimdim executives eventually change to the GNU General Public License (GPL) instead. By changing the software's license from the MPL to the GPL, "we are making it easier for the community to use our product," says Dimdim founder DD Ganguly.

Linux vendors and developers didn't get to relax for long after an August court ruling had the effect of ending SCO's copyright lawsuit against IBM and Novell over their distributions of Linux

The nation's first Linux patent suit currently facing Red Hat and Novell isn't about open source at all. Or so the plaintiff says.

Linux distributors were sued for the first time last week over their operating systems. But despite recent rhetoric, Microsoft wasn't the plaintiff. Instead, the suit against Red Hat and Linux came from a subsidiary of Acacia Research, a company that calls itself the "leader in patent licensing."

The head of the Open Invention Network (OIN) has dismissed Microsoft's claims that Linux violates over 200 of its patents.

The first U.S. GPL-related lawsuit appears to be headed for a quick out-of-court settlement. Monsoon Multimedia admitted today that it had violated the GPLv2, and said it will release its modified BusyBox code in full compliance with the license.

For the first time in the U.S., a company and software vendor, Monsoon Multimedia, is being taken to court for a GPL violation. Previously, alleged GPL violations have all been settled by letters from the FSF (Free Software Foundation) or other open-source organizations, pointing out the violation.

Commissioner Neelie Kroes said criticism by a top U.S. Justice Department official of an EU court decision against Microsoft was "totally unacceptable."

Today’s decision by the European Court of First Instance upholding previous fines and penalties against Microsoft is neither surprising nor newsworthy.

The Linux Foundation has announced that they will be hosting two summits. The two meetings will focus on Linux, and what part it plays in modern business environments in a legal role.

Open-source software and the licenses that govern it suffered a serious setback in a San Francisco District Court earlier this month, following a preliminary decision that could effectively deprive open source licensors from being able to get a court injunction to stop the violation of the terms of their license going forward.

A court has ordered a pirate, and Linux user, to dump his favourite open sauce software and install Microsoft Windows instead.

The Linux Foundation Wednesday revealed that two attorneys well-known in the open-source community will make up the legal team for the group, which is aimed at protecting the interests of Linux in the community.

In response to inquiries regarding a German court's ruling that Skype had breached the GPL, the company told LinuxDevices.com today that it "has not acted improperly." The alleged violation was associated with the method by which Skype "distributed" GPL-licensed source code with a Linux-powered VoIP handset.

A German court has ruled that Skype violated the General Public License version 2 by selling a Linux-based phone without access to the source code.

A few years ago, the idea that savvy developers and IT professionals would need to know anything about intellectual property law would have been dismissed as a bad joke. Oh, certainly, there were arguments from time to time over fine points in the GPL Version 2, but for the most part, it didn't matter.

There's been a lot of legal saber rattling in and about the Linux world in recent weeks, including dire warnings from Microsoft's lawyers that open-source software violates patents held by the software giant and fears that the Free Software Foundation might punish Novell for its controversial patent deal with Microsoft. But so far the response from the solution provider community has been more of a collective shrug.

The final draft of GPLv3 states that companies that distribute open-source software cannot at the same time pursue patent claims against users of that software.

In case you were wondering--and I was, given the noises Microsoft has been making lately about the open-source operating system--Linus Torvalds does indeed own the trademark on Linux. Interestingly, so does Rosch, a detergent company based in Switzerland.

So the real question is this: is this in fact a patent cross license on specific patents after all? If it is, are we looking at a GPLv2 violation on its face?

The Linux Foundation is prepared to defend any Linux user charged with violating Microsoft's patents, but Executive Director Jim Zemlin adds that a critical review of Windows code would show that it can be claimed to violate other vendors' patents as well.

A former lover of the missing wife of Linux programmer and accused spouse killer Hans Reiser has confessed to killing eight people unrelated to the case, prosecutors informed the defense last week.

Holy crap, I think they did. Here's the patent for UAC:

 View older news this year: Jul Jun May Apr Mar Feb Jan
 View news from other years: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999
 View older news in category Legal this year: Jul May Apr Mar
 View Legal news from other years: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004