Novell Warns Against Patent Suits
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Maintaining that patent lawsuits can stifle innovation, the Linux software vendor warns that it could wield its own patent portfolio as a defense.
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On Tuesday, Novell Inc. announced that it will use its patent portfolio to protect its open-source software offerings. In a policy statement, Novell said it will utilize its patent portfolio to defend against
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SINGAPORE : Microsoft&#39;s chief executive Steve Ballmer warned Asian governments on Thursday that they could face patent lawsuits for using the Linux operating system instead of Windows.
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Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Steve Ballmer on Thursday warned Asian governments that they could face intellectual rights-infringement lawsuits for using rival open-source operating platforms such as Linux.
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Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) warned Asian governments on Thursday they could face patent lawsuits for using the Linux operating system instead of its Windows software.
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Novell filed suit against Microsoft on Friday, claiming the company used anti-competitive tactics in the desktop software market during the 1990s.
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(InfoWorld) - The Linux faithful might be staring down the barrel of another round of Microsoft's legal taunts, but at last week's Linux Foundation Summit, the reaction was more ho-hum than oh-no. "The reality is that they are not going to sue a single customer," says Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. "It would not be in their business interest. Microsoft is not going to sue their customers." Zemlin says one fact alone â that most corporate Linux users have a mixed environment with Microsoft software â will protect users from the software giant going after them based on patent infringement. The patent issue has risen to near the top of the Linux Foundation's list with the signing last year of a cross-licensing patent deal between Novell and Microsoft, in which Microsoft promised not to sue Novell Suse Linux users for patent infringement. Several similar deals have followed since with Linux vendors Xandros and Linspire. As part of its charter, the Linux Foundation offers legal-protection services for developers to safeguard the future of Linux. Microsoft claims that Linux violates 235 of its patents, although it has yet to detail what those patents are. Critics contend the issue is meant to create uncertainty among potential corporate Linux adopters. But Zemlin says the contracts are hurting Linux "only in the fact that Microsoft uses them to create a perception of risk that in reality is not there." Many others at the foundation's first-ever summit -- a collection of some of the most influential Linux kernel designers, software developers, and user companies -- took that same position. "Open source is safe for us to use: That is the message that I want to get out there," said Chris DiBona, Google's open source program manager. "I would be shocked if Microsoft didn't have patents that read on Linux," said Mark Radcliffe, a partner at law firm DLA Piper US who advises companies on intellectual property issues. "Will they enforce them is the question. Companies using Linux don't have to fear patent suits." Radcliffe thinks Microsoft is in a difficult position because it probably couldn't avoid spearing its own customers with any legal action. "I think the Microsoft [Novell] deal was a misfire," he says. "I think what Microsoft's actions recognize is that Linux is here to stay. And any competitor will use tools to try and slow it down." Others say that patents have become a real problem for the computer industry. "They are sold to the public as being about supporting innovation, but their impact on industry is a nightmare," says Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux. "They don't help IBM, they don't help Sun, and they don't help Microsoft. But the free software guys are worried about this." So worried, that the Free Software Foundation added to its near-final GNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0 specific language that addresses patent deals that could erode the unique open source qualities of the Linux operating system. The hype has reached such proportions that Dan Frye, vice president of Linux and open technology at IBM and head of its Linux Technology Center, said during a panel session at last week's summit, "everybody, just chill when v3 comes out." GNU GPL 3.0 is slated for final release on June 29. Linux creator Linus Torvalds, who is employed by the Linux Foundation, wrote on the Linux kernel mailing list last week that the Linux kernel may stay under Version 2, which he said is a better license, but that Sun's choice of licensing for open-sourcing Solaris could influence the decision. The Linux kernel is made up of a number of components, developed by various individuals under a number of different open source licenses, which means all those stakeholders would have to agree to switch to Version 3. "People are looking to Linus for that kind of leadership," says Google's DiBona. "I think v3 will be evolutionary, which is what it is supposed to be." Others say the issue of GPL 3.0 license adoption goes much deeper than just patent concerns. "Even if v3 is better than v2, it has to be significantly better to undertake all the pain to change the kernel code [licensing]," said James Bottomley, a kernel developer and CTO of SteelEye Technology, which makes high-availability software for Linux systems. "We are not going to waste six months to change the kernel. This is a pragmatic argument, not a legal one."ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Novell has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, charging that the software giant thwarted sales of its WordPerfect software by withholding technical information and by making the Windows OS inhospitable to the application.
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Forget about Tivoization. How about adding a clause to the next version of the GPL that counters Novellization? The clause would say (in proper legalese), that if any code infringes on intellectual property or patents held by third parties, and the third parties take legal action, the contributors of the offending code assume 100% liability.  In short, if Novell injects Microsoft IP into open source and Microsoft wants to sue, it must sue Novell and nobody else, because Novell assumes liability under this new license.  This would render any "promise not to sue the end customer" agreement with Novell meaningless.
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Just days after settling one anti-trust lawsuit with Microsoft, Novell filed another one. According to a Novell (down $0.
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Novell Inc. sued Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O on Friday, claiming that the world&#39;s largest software maker used its Windows monopoly to hurt sales of the WordPerfect processing program, which the smaller rival owned briefly a decade ago.
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Almost everything that can be said has been said about the latest moves by Microsoft to create Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) about Linux. Countless pundits and analysts have pointed out that Microsoft threats are toothless. Some have noted that Microsoft has singled out Linux and OpenOffice, the biggest threats to its monopoly on operating systems and office suites. Surely Microsoft could claim that the *BSDs infringe on similar patents if not the same ones. But the *BSDs do not pose as great a threat to the company. Others have pointed out that Microsoft would be insane to pull an SCO and sue its own customers. Still others have noted that IBM and/or OIN could respond to a patent war with a massive retaliation in patent infringement claims. I have no doubt that Microsoft has lifted a lot of GPL code (more likely algorithms) for Windows, which would prevent Microsoft from following through with its threats. To do so would require that Microsoft open its own code to scrutiny. The list goes on, and others have covered the angles very well. There is one perspective I haven't yet seen, at least not the way I propose to deal with it. This perspective follows below.
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Software company asks appeals court to cancel patent infringement judgment.
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The U.S. technology industry has faced dozens of lawsuits by &quot;patent speculators&quot; in recent years, and it&#39;s time for Congress to fix problems with the patent system, Intel&#39;s general counsel said Monday.In the last 21 months, U.S. technology vendors have contended with 193 patent infringement lawsuits, and 70 percent of them came from patent speculators -- &quot;people who buy up patents for the purpose of litigating them,&quot; said Bruce Sewell, Intel&#39;s executive vice president and general counsel, at a patent forum.By contrast, companies in the pharmaceutical industry have been defendants in 28 patent infringement lawsuits during the same stretch, and 24 of those lawsuits have been between competitors, he said.Patent lawsuit reform is needed to fix the problem with patent speculators -- called patent trolls by some people -- Sewell said, speaking at a&#160;patent reform&#160;forum in Washington, D.C. Patent reform legislation pending in the U.S. Senate doesn&#39;t target legitimate inventors, he said.&quot;We&#39;re not talking about individual inventors who sue for patent infringement,&quot; Sewell said. &quot;We&#39;re talking about patent speculators who warehouse patents and use those patents to go after successful companies.&quot;But Hans Sauer, associated general counsel at the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), called the Patent Reform Act, a version of which&#160;passed the House of Representatives&#160;in September, a &quot;very patent-hostile bill.&quot; In the Senate, the bill has&#160;stalled over objections&#160;from the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, as well as inventors and some labor unions.The House version of Patent Reform Act, supported by several large tech vendors including Microsoft and IBM, would allow courts to change the way they assess damages in patent infringement cases. Currently, courts generally consider the value of the entire product when a small piece of the product infringes a patent; the bill would allow courts to base damages only on the value of the infringing piece.&quot;Not all patents are identical,&quot; Sewell said. &quot;Some patents are more important in a product, and some patents are less important.&quot;The bill would also allow a new way to challenge patents within one year after they&#39;ve been granted.Changes in the way patents are enforced could hurt innovation, Sauer said. The bill could diminish incentives for the health industry to innovate in the coming years, he said.&quot;Will I, 30 years from now, pay $10 less for an iPod and have a 10 percent less chance that Alzheimer&#39;s medicine will be available?&quot; he said.It is difficult to predict the effects of the patent reform legislation, added Anat Hakim, a patent lawyer with Foley &amp; Lardner, the law firm that sponsored the patent forum.Sewell complained that there&#39;s a small &quot;cottage industry&quot; of patent speculators that have sprung up. &quot;The concern is that we don&#39;t end up encouraging another cottage industry,&quot; Hakim said.The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on several patent questions in recent years, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is instituting new rules later this year, Sauer noted. Adding a patent overhaul bill on top of those changes is &quot;a lot to happen at once,&quot; he said.But Sewell said the changes are needed for the IT industry, if not biotech. &quot;You have a group of companies that are happy with the status quo, and are saying, &#39;Don&#39;t change it; it&#39;s not broken,&#39;&quot; he said. &quot;That&#39;s fine, but it&#39;s broken for a lot of other people.&quot;
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Novell Inc. has completed its conversion to Linux by launching an attack on Microsoft Corp., claiming that the company has stifled software innovation and that the market will abandon Microsoft Windows at some point in the future.
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An appeals court ruled Monday that two remaining antitrust claims brought against Microsoft by Novell could go forward, upholding an earlier court decision that dismissed the company's other four claims.
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Microsoft Corp. warned Asian  governments on Thursday they could face patent lawsuits for  using the Linux operating system instead of its Windows  software.