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Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal
From: |
Alexander Terekhov |
Subject: |
Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal |
Date: |
Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:11:40 +0200 |
http://sanantonio.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2008/06/09/daily18.html
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Essentially, Red Hat has licensed the patents in question, which deal
with computer databases, from DataTern. DataTern had claimed that one of
Red Hat's business-software products, a database program known as JBoss
Hibernate, violated the patents.
Under terms of the settlement, customers have a royalty-free, worldwide
license to use any and all Red Hat products, Red Hat says in a
statement. DataTern and its parent company, British venture capital firm
Amphion Innovations, also have promised not to file suits related to
claims on Red Hat products.
In a statement, Amphion Innovations said it would take in $800,000 from
the settlement after costs. An Amphion spokesperson wasn't immediately
available for comment. Red Hat isn't commenting on terms of the
settlement, a spokesperson says.
"Our distributors, customers, and anyone else who uses Red Hat products
are protected with respect to Red Hat products," the company said in a
statement posted to its Web site. "This broad coverage is a significant
benefit to the open source community."
------
Reactions from the freetards universe:
http://technocrat.net/d/2008/6/11/43190
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Full terms of the settlement and patent licenses are not yet available.
Richard Fontana, patent attorney for Red Hat and formerly of the
Software Freedom Law Center, said
Red Hat's settlement satisfies the most stringent patent
provisions in open source licenses, is consistent with the
letter and spirit of all versions of the GPL and provides
patent safety for developers, distributors and users of
open source software.
Richard Stallman, executive director of the Free Software Foundation,
said
If we can judge from Red Hat's statement, the deal is good
for the free software community. I would not want to treat
that as certain; they might have chosen not to mention some
negative side. Be that as it may, it was an unfortunate
mistake to refer to patents as "intellectual property"; see
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html. Red Hat should
know better than to do that.
Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center, and general counsel of
the Free Software Foundation, said
"Red Hat's settlement of outstanding patent litigation on
terms that provide additional protection to other members of
the community upstream and downstream from Red Hat is a
positive contribution to the resources for community patent
defense. We would hope to see more settlements of this
kind--in which parties secure more than their own particular
legal advantage in relation to the third-party patent risk
of the whole FOSS community--when commercial redistributors
of FOSS choose to settle patent litigation. SFLC welcomes
Red Hat's efforts on the community's behalf."
------
PJ of Groklaw also claims that the deal is "Compatible with GPLv3"
and "harmonious with GPLv2".
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080611191302741
(Red Hat Makes History With Patent Settlement - Compatible with GPLv3)
------
You've probably been wondering why I've been quiet, when there is news
about a patent settlement between Red Hat and Firestar and DataTern in
the JBoss litigation. It's because I wanted to be positive I was correct
that this is the first known settlement involving patents that is
harmonious with GPLv3. It is.
It's also harmonious with GPLv2, of course, but this is history in the
making, friends. They settled a lawsuit brought against them in a way
that licenses patents without violating the GPL. I'll show you how, but
first, so you know I'm not just dreaming, here's the answer I got from
Richard Fontana, Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel, Red Hat, to
my question about whether this is the first known GPLv3 patent agreement
that works:
Most patent settlements and similar agreements are
confidential, but to my knowledge this is the first patent
settlement that satisfies the requirements of GPL version 3.
Indeed, it really goes further than GPLv3 in the degree to
which upstream and downstream parties receive safety from
the patents at issue here. (And this is not a case of
trying to find a loophole in the GPL, but rather a desire
on our part to reach an agreement that provided broad
patent protection for developers, distributors and users,
while complying fully with the conditions of the licenses
of the software we and our community distribute.)
------
ROFL
regards,
alexander.
--
http://gng.z505.com/index.htm
(GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can
be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards
too, whereas GNU cannot.)
- Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal,
Alexander Terekhov <=
- Re: Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal, Linonut, 2008/06/13
- Re: Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal, rjack, 2008/06/13
- Re: Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal, Linonut, 2008/06/14
- Re: Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal, rjack, 2008/06/14
- Re: Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal, Linonut, 2008/06/14
- Re: Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal, rjack, 2008/06/14
- Re: Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal, Linonut, 2008/06/14
- Re: Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal, Tim Smith, 2008/06/14
- Re: Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal, Linonut, 2008/06/15
- Re: Red Hat pays $800,000 + costs for a patent deal, Hadron, 2008/06/15