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It's newsworthy. It should be posted here. I tend to think the reason Thom feels obliged to say that is because he'll get attacked from every angle.

It's newsworthy. It should be posted here.

Not only that, but I would like to see the backgrounds on other employees at this Innovation thing too. I mean, what if one of them worked for the US gov.? Does that mean the government is involved??

Seriously now, Groklaw might very well be right - but the 'evidence' presented is extremely weak - at best.

Bluto: "It's my advice to you, start drinking heavily."

Some of the folks in the discussions might qualify as that, but the site itself tends to be fairly lucid and on point. IMO, of course.

Naah.. there are no such things as coincidences.

July: A former Microsoft boss is hired.
Beginning of October: A former Microsoft boss is hired.
Beginning of October: Steve Ballmer, Microsoft, threatens to sue Red Hat over patents.
A week later in October. The company hiring two Microsoft bosses sues Red Hat over patents.

Oh well, it'll be fun to see the microserfs in here going in defense mode instantly. Including OSN-staff.

EDIT: Add to that the fact Microsoft sponsored SCO's suits against IBM, Red Hat and Novell. One can do whatever he wants to dismiss it as "coincidences" (though no such thing exists) - but there are an awful lot of these "coincidences" (again, coincidences do not exist - they are just a term for something that fits together too well and cannot be explained without having to accept an unpleasant truth).

Edited 2007-10-12 14:55 UTC

Try again. And this time without grammatical errors that renders your post meaningless.

Mm, Am ?

Who is defending the Open Source world? The patent troll company? Or Red Hat or Acacia Research Corporation (owner of the patent troll company)? Who is making more damage to the free world than MS itself?

Your post in unclear.

Oh, we're pro-Microsoft today?

Darn, I thought it was pro-Linux day today. I guess my calendar's off.

Actually you're supposed to be pro-Amiga today, but it just didn't seem worth it...

Touché Thom, touché.

Your anti-Osnews... Now that didn't make sense.
It's always hard to try stand in middle ground since you got the punches from every direction, but keep it up.

" Oh well, it'll be fun to see the microserfs in here going in defense mode instantly. Including OSN-staff. "

You may be right, but at this point, there is no evidence.

I worked at one university for 8 years doing tech support, now I work at another university doing tech support. Does that mean I am a spy? That I have taken secrets from my old employer and given them to my new one?

No it means I changed jobs. I need more evidence that what Groklaw is giving before I believe any of it.

No, it doesn't mean you are a spy, because no "coincidences" have taken place.

However, if you had worked at University A for 8 years and switched to University B and it was found that University A suddenly knew a lot about what was going on internally in the tech department at University B - then we'd have a "coincidence" centered around you.

But since there is no coincidence, your former work place is completely irrelevant.

There is such a thing as common sense, or Occam's Razor, or "if it walks and qualks like a duck..." and so on.

The fact that there are two ex-Microsoft employees working for IP Inovation is the least significant of the circumstances. People should read more than just the summary before they talk.

Microsoft has it in for open source and free software in general and Linux in particular. They are threats to its business and even more dangerous, its very business model, because they seek to empower the consumer and undermine all the techniques that are used to tie them in: vendor lock-in, software patents, monopoly tactics, obscuring formats and protocols, DRM, DMCA.

Microsoft has a long history of FUD attacks against anything having to do with FOSS.

Microsoft has tried to attack Linux under copyright pretexts by sponsoring SCO and making it do the dirty job for it.

The things are getting grim. GPLv3 is out and it limits anti-freedom business tactics even more than ever. Microsoft is having a hard time defending itself from monopoly suits, ODF is a menace on the entire business model of its Office suite, Vista's future is not clear, worldwide governments are asking for interoperability, open source and open formats.

Only days before, Ballmer goes on to state veiled threats against Red Hat. That after Microsoft has long now insisted that "Linux infringes on its patents".

And now the first patent lawsuit comes out, as expected, not from Microsoft itself, but from a patent troll. The target is Red Hat and Novell, which is very curious. Patent trolls act by buying patents and trying to extort money from companies with deep pockets. So why not Microsoft? Or IBM? Or Sun? They're much richer than Red Hat.

Why Microsoft isn't attacking directly is very clear. If this blows in their face, it helps if they can claim they had nothing to do with it (see SCO). And second, they can be counter-sued for patents, which would result in a stalemate; whereas IP Inovation are a patent troll and such trolls are careful not to infringe on anything, because they don't produce anything, they're just in it for the lawsuits.

The tendency is clear. Attack not the FOSS developers and groups, which are non-profit, but try to kill companies who make money from Linux. It will both get you money and will spread fear about using Linux comercially.

It's a duck, make no mistake.

http://skepdic.com/posthoc.html

The post hoc fallacy does not apply to this situation, since the assumption is not merely based on sequence, but on the context and the details of each event.

The post hoc fallacy ONLY applies IF assumptions are made SOLELY on the basis of the sequence of events. Your use of the fallacy here is a fallacy in it self.

And no, coincidences do not happen. Coincidences are merely a term for events we either do not understand or do not want to understand.

dylansmrjones:

You seem to telling everything with so much confident as if you know exactly this happened. This is what I call guilty until proven innocent way of justice.

Sorry but I don't share your views. I don't believe that IP phone is suing Redhat because Microsoft funded it.

How do you even know that Microsoft's employee perceived this case and it was not one of the already working employees.

Edited 2007-10-12 16:56

Oooh.. you integer has incremented. You used to be CrazyDude0. When were you incremented? And can I expect you to be more than 1 at some time in the future?

(Oh, not smoking as such. Drinking strong Java coffee - really good )

How could the government be involved? EVERYONE knows that the government is actually controlled by a sinister cabal consisting of the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, the Reptilians and the International House of Pancakes. First they fake a moon landing, and now this!!!

>>Microsoft is a HUGE employer in the tech industry, particularly in the area of IP. That someone would go from MS to a patent holding company seems to me to be a fairly reasonable career move rather than conspiracy.<<

But there is more to it than that. Msft and the patent troll company just came to some sort of agreement last August. Also, this action immediately follows Ballmer's thinly veiled threats against redhat.

Furthermore, the editors of this site bashing groklaw about "black helicoptor mode" is not justified. PJ has been amazingly accurate, and honest, all along. Certainly PJ has more accurate than the standard tech-pop-media.

It is hardly unusual for a large company like Microsoft to have relationships with a number of other companies and to use their services or join forces to achieve common goals - this is pretty normal in the business world. It is also pretty normal for people in one company working closely with another company to decide that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence and to move from one company to the other - I've done this myself on occasion. And it is again quite common for one company dealing with another company to poach staff from the other.

This is not remotely unusual or suspect in the business world. Many organisations require staff to sign a declaration as to whether they have any perceived or actual conflict of interest if they move from one company to another which has or had a business relationship with their former employer. If an employee of IP Innovations owns shares in Microsoft (or vice versa), that would be a perceived conflict of interest, and most likely the organisation would require that employee to divest themselves of those shares (or at the very least declare their interest), or face termination.

MS and other companies who own (or claim to own) IP have a shared interest in pursuing organisations or individuals that they perceive as violating their IP. Sharing resources & personnel to do this is quite legitimate, and does not constitute a conspiracy in any nefarious or criminal sense. Corporations join forces all the time to fight common battles - this is normal.

If Red Hat has not done anything wrong, they have nothing to worry about.

This is not remotely unusual or suspect in the business world. Many organisations require staff to sign a declaration as to whether they have any perceived or actual conflict of interest if they move from one company to another which has or had a business relationship with their former employer.

We are not talking here of a conflict of interest we are talking about a community of interest.

i suspect there was a recent reform. and like when copyright is reformed, anything still protected under the old law gets protection under the new law...

No. There has been no recent reform that has extended patent terms.

The current law allows for you to sue people who were infringing prior to patent expiration.

In other words... if company A holds a patent that expired last year and company B released an infringing product two years ago (before the actual expiration of the patent) then company A can sue company B for damages.

Also entering into it is something called the "Doctrine of Laches." Laches states that, if a patent holder fails to press his/her patent rights against one infringer, then they may well have forfeited thier patent rights altogether.

The US has a complicated legal mess when it comes to software patents.

Full disclosure: I am not a lawyer, but I have done a fair amount of research on this subject. I am the author of one of the most prominent anti-patent petitions on the internet. Please find it by looking at the front page of www.gnu.org under "Take Action."

Later, GJC

The patent was filed Mar 25, 1987 and issued Dec 10, 1991, so it expires Dec 10, 2008. I wonder if the judgment has to be issued before the time runs out or if the patent status is grandfathered by the filing date.

The patent could be liberally interpreted as covering any window manager that implements multiple workspaces. However, there's some more specific language that refers to particular kinds of data structures and such, so it's very possible that Xorg and the DEs/WMs aren't really infringing.

The major question is whether we can code around this patent if the legal threat is credible. I guess we'll have to wait for guidance from the FOSS legal arsenal (SFLC, EFF, Linux Foundation, etc.)

Here we go again! Just as soon as SCO goes away, a new challenger emerges. I suspect that when we defeat "IP Innovation", there will be new threats lined up. There certainly seems to be a coordinated effort to embroil Linux in constant IP controversy, and frankly, it doesn't really matter to what extent Microsoft is involved. What's important is that we get used to it as a community and learn to gracefully handle these allegations from the legal, technical, marketing, and public relations perspectives.

Further, I hope Novell has gained a greater appreciation for how monumentally stupid they are. Even if Microsoft is the ringleader behind these continued IP assaults, the legal actions are highly unlikely to ever come directly from Microsoft. The primary threat is clearly through patent trolls like SCO and IP Innovation. The Novell deal has not made any Linux vendor or user any safer. If anything, they are less safe because of it.

*sigh*

You had me up until this paragraph. This is getting ridiculous. Patent trolling existed long before Novell even entered the linux game.

If Novell has any fault in this matter, it is only due to generating a revenue stream from linux products, a "fault" shared by Red Hat even more so.

Just as Microsoft is ignoring the linux community at large in their ceaseless FUDing, this company is targeting only Red Hat and Novell. Why? Money. That's all this is. Even if MS is behind this, it's still about the enterprise companies.

Is there a threat to the linux community at large? Only in as much as the developers will have to find ways to code around the infringement *if* the patent holds and RH/Novell are found to be infringing. Even then it will be an issue localized to the US market, and not likely to harm Joe Average.

This is nothing new. The "community" has always said that they'll address patent concerns responsibly and work around them when necessary. And you can bet that a good portion of that development will come from Novell, as well as RH. Both organizations have committed to stand behind linux and address patent issues as they occur.

So now the buck has finally dropped. It was bound to happen, linux has reached a point where the commercial companies around it become tantalizing targets just as their proprietary counterparts have been for some time now. This is the first, no doubt there will be others. (The SCO case was about copyrights, not patents, but it too was similarly about money, which is why they started by going after IBM, expecting a quick settlement.) The "community" better get used to it and quit running around like a bunch of Chicken Littles every time it happens, it's simply the way things work in the US. Patents are obstacles, they don't necessarily have to be barriers.

This has SFA to do with Novell and the "deal".

This isn't a game. You don't just throw away like that a company you've built over years and years.

Your theory holds no whater, MS doen'nt hold any patents related with what IP Innovations is demanding.

That's irrelevant. The company controlled by former Microsoft bosses holds the patent.

Yeah, like we know for sure the exact extent of Microsoft's patent portfolio. Why are you so certain?

I agree, this reeks of advertisement, and of naming Steve Ballmer at the puppet master. You can almost picture Novell execs being ushered into a conference room at Microsoft days before this went down, and told, "Don't worry, this is what's going to happen, we're setting this whole thing up so more companies know what will happen if they don't take our deal."

It's classic mobster stuff....those who don't pay the protection money get their businesses blown up. Hasn't anyone watched the Sopranos in here?

step 5 use the gpl 3 to offer the same protections to red hat lol.?

Perhaps it should have been phrases as "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

My initial impression is that there is considerable prior art, but we will see.

That was my hope but I am somewhat more dubious about that now.

The original patent which is due to expire in december 2008 was first filed in 1987. It deals with data structures that enable the representation of a window to exist on more than one workplace and how one can switch between them.

The first Unix window manager for X, with virtual desktops/workplaces, dates back to swm (derived from twm) which was released in 1990 and which had only a very primitive basis without the functionality described in the patent.

What may possibly infringe th patent is the ability to switch on and off the ability for a window to be visible on all workplaces as in Gnome and KDE. Even more likely to potentially infringe is the OSX expose function (Apple has already paid the troll off) and the similar functions in Compiz Fusion.

RH and Novell's defence will probably at the technical level be based on arguing that the functionality is not exactly equivalent and has been implemented in a different way. Also they can argue obviousness and that this patent adds nothing new and not obvious to prior patents by the same group at Xerox which are now expired.

They cannot put forward the argument that they are merely distributing software that was developed elsewhere and are not responsible for the content, as Gnome's Metacity WM was developed by Havoc Pennington at Red Hat and much of the Compiz work was carried out at Novell.

More importantly this is an opportunity to turn the whole case round at for them to put the whole patent system with respect to software on trial. IP Innovation want a jury trial. Well it might not work that well for them. Poor struggling innovative companies employing skilled programmers to develop innovative software to provide real goods amd services that help the economy grow versus parasitic piratical software trolls who produce nothing but live off the hard work of others like bloodsucking leeches who are in a RICO conspiracy with a convicted monopolist. You could even sell a jury on jury nullification in a case like this.

They don't have to spin it as "us vs linux". Actually, Microsoft will do whatever it can to NOT get involved, lest the whole things blows up later.

Regardless, we all knew this day was coming and what's it's really about: corporate hatred for Linux as the most proeminent FOSS representative, hatred for companies that are proving that FOSS is commercially viable, and the fact that the US patent system is deeply flawed.

Unfortunately, the very definition of a patent troll is that they don't actually do anything of value. They don't "innovate". So what are you going to sue them for? They won't be infringing on any patents that the OIN has.

Unless...

Does the OIN have a patent on being a patent troll?

Edited 2007-10-12 17:39

everyone does! the USPTO has a dispenser outside their HQ

"The final point I'd like to make is this actually looks good for Novell. So many people have been mad at Novell for making the interoperability and promise not to sue each other's customers, pact with MS. Well, now Novell itself is being sued (possibly by proxy from MS itself), for patent infringement. This should clear Novell's name in the open source world, frankly."

...and how much cash did MS hand over to Novell again? $240 million or so wasn't it...with an up front payment of $108 million? More than enough to help cover these pesky distractions anyway...

As usual, follow the money:
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2006/11/08/microsoft_novell_money/

I'm well aware of that, and good for Novell. :-)

And, due to the GPL 3, which all of the GNU tool chain will use, and in order to stay relevant Novell will have to include it, MS will be distributing GPL 3 (the Suse certificates), legally binding them to the GPL 3, and in effect (although they vehemently deny it) legally granting patent amnesty to all users of Linux, not just SuSE.

So that's another good thing for Novell, where they are ultimately helping the entire Linux community. At the very least, the combination of the MS/Novell deal and the GPL v3 puts serious water on the Ballmer FUD fire.

Then again, I'm in a defend Novell mood this week, due to trying out openSuSE 10.3, and having it grow on me (I'm more used to Ubuntu/Debian), and really really liking it.

Yeah, the patents in question are actually quite ridiculous... Nobody should be allowed to have patents for such very basic technology that is used everywhere in the software world today. I cannot see how this case could have any future in court, at least in the civilized world.

<sarcasm> However, if it were possible, somebody should sue USPTO and the main US IP law promoters for creating and allowing a mess like the US software patent and IP system that hinders normal IT business and software development more than almost anything else today in the USA. </sarcasm>

If John Doe has more money than you and represents the potential for a far larger settlement, then yes. Patent protections extend to use of patent-protected inventions, not just manufacturing and distribution of.



That is, frankly, the indirect crux of the matter and the cause of speculation.



Actually, that's one thing that supreme court has addressed, as well as the patent legislation revisions winding their way somewhere in the US legislative system. Previously you could make up a number and claim damages, as well as obtain injunctions as a method of inducing a settlement. The court has determined that injunctions are not warranted in cases where the plaintiff is not manufacturing a similar product and no competitive harm exists; the new legislation aims to smack down the way material damages are determined.

This will likely get dragged out through the courts, RH and Novell can't settle or license the patent because of the issues it would raise with FLOSS licensing concerns. And the patent trolls can no longer get an injunction to prevent the distribution of the infringing products.

If the patent trolls are legitimately trying to achieve some sort of financial resolution out of this, the only thing that wo