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

 Software Freedom Law Center comes to Microsoft's aid, Dec 18, 2006

If you thought Novell partnering up with Microsoft was shocking news, then you probably don't want to read the rest of this story. Just remember, we warned you.

This is part two in a three-part series of articles debunking some common myths about the GPL's reach and highlighting the sensible solution that the Linux community has constructed despite these myths.

The open source community's commercial and non-commercial members have debated the intellectual property issues surrounding the GPL and Linux for years, and even more now as the release of GPLv3 approaches.

Having formed last year to provide Linux with intellectual property (IP) protection, the Open Invention Network has declared itself ready to respond to Microsoft Corp's 'baseless' claims that Linux contains its IP.

Could Microsoft products be in violation of some of the patents that cover Linux and open-source technologies, as many in the community believe?

The court was called upon to determine whether supplying copyright software under the GPL violated federal antitrust laws.

If Microsoft is seeking for a courtroom collision with the world of free software, it may be disappointed.

But let's assume, for the sake of this discussion only, that Novell managed to squeak by the terms of GPLv2 by a millimeter. Would that not illustrate beautifully exactly why we need GPLv3? We need it because folks are starting to get cute with v2.

The open source software operations of IBM, Red Hat and Novell need not fear prosecution under antitrust laws, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has dismissed Microsoft's patent pledge to open source developers as meaningless and warned that it could provide a false sense of security.

The patent cross licensing deal that Microsoft and Novell unveiled last Thursday will be incompatible with the GPL3 license and is likely incompatible with the current GPL2 license, alleged Eben Moglen, a law professor and open source activist.

Debian plans to release its newest version, Etch, in December, and wants Mozilla's Firefox Web browser to be part of the distribution. Mozilla, however, told Debian it couldn't release the software without its accompanying artwork. Now a legal expert says that the existing distinctions between copyright and trademark laws should have prevented this from becoming an issue in the first place.

Patent infringement against open-source projects is not really a threat and is just noise, said Stuart Cohen, the CEO of OSDL

An effort by the Open Source Development Labs to help developers defend themselves against software patents has come under fire from Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman, who believes that the plan could backfire.

Israeli open source software developer Alexander Maryanovsky has filed a lawsuit against international master chess player Alexander Rabinovich alleging that the chess player and his organization have violated the GPL

The New Zealand Open Source Society(NZOSS) has claimed a moral victory in the patent office after Microsoft amended its patent on XML schema. NZOSS president Peter Harrison says the changes made to the patent were such that the organisation was no longer concerned about the threat posed by the patent.

On Wednesday, Neelie Kroes, competition commissioner for the European Union slapped Microsoft with a $357.3 million (280.5 million euro) fine for failing to comply with the European Commission's landmark 2004 antitrust ruling

Linux Australia's battle against proposed copyright laws had the Attorney General's Department a tad confused yesterday.

With a show of hands, French lawmakers approved a new copyright law on Friday, in a move that could have profound consequences for online music stores, open-source programmers, desktop Linux users and P-to-P (peer-to-peer) file sharers.

Red Hat has been hit by a patent lawsuit related to JBoss, just weeks after completing its purchase of the open-source software company.

The intricacies of free and open-source software licenses require an honest conversation between you and your legal department.

The Victorian Department of Justice (DoJ) is understood to have deployed a secure, "locked-down" Linux environment across more than 100 desktops in state prisons.

A petition, from Linux Australia, is asking the government to uphold consumer and competition rights when drafting anti-circumvention laws, which will tighten the reins on copying protected materials.

Another attempt to tie down a standard with a patent has gone down in flames. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected a patent that Forgent Networks was asserting against the Joint Photographic Experts Group, better known as JPEG, images standard.

Open Invention Network (OIN), the company formed by IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony, unveiled today some of the new patents it has acquired in order to protect the Linux environment. The new e-commerce and Internet-related software patents will be offered royalty-free, along with OIN's existing intellectual property portfolio, to its licensees.

The European Commission and its allies continued their robust defense of the 2004 antitrust ruling against Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday and Thursday morning, tearing apart arguments that the decision trampled on the company’s intellectual property rights.

A US judge quashed the firm's demands that rival Novell hand over documents it presented to the European Commission for use in an anti-trust case.

Is Microsoft getting ready to attack Linux and open-source software with its patents?

A renewed bid to register the word "Linux" as an Australian trademark must meet an early April deadline or face defeat.

"GPL 3 is like GPL 2," Moglen says. "It wants you to be able to use free software in combination with non-free software, providing you do so in ways that don't obscure the user's rights in the free software parts."

The Software Freedom Law Center on March 8 will publish a white paper that dismisses recent publications that have alleged GNU General Public License violations in relation to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

Expect Microsoft vs Linux battle to heat up once again. Stoking the flame of the ongoing war now are intellectual property (IP) issues. The rising threat of third party IP infringement is promising to give a new turn to the entire debate, till now primarily focused on the ownership and security concerns.

The Free Software Foundation has accused Microsoft of behaving as if it considers itself above the law

If BlackBerry maker Research in Motion has to shut down its over-the-air e-mail service because of its legal battles with intellectual property-holding company NTP, the open-source wireless e-mail company Funambol may be able to keep BlackBerries working.

Richard Stallman's Free Software Foundation wants radical rule changes for open-source code. Others disagree. Can diplomacy save the day?

The principles are the same, but technology has moved on significantly in the 15 years since the release of GPL 2

The first draft of the new GPL is out and lawyers are beginning to form their impressions of this open-source license.

After being denied twice, Microsoft has had its file-storage system patents upheld

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