How about we make "non-practicing entity" a defense in a patent lawsuit? That, if you can prove that the owner of the patent is an NPE (and doesn't reasonably license or innovate or even try to innovate, only sue or unreasonably license), case tossed...
Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
11–20 of 197 posts
Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
#12There needs to be anti-SLAPP style legislation for patent trolls. I honestly don't understand why there isn't: it seems like an easy PR win for legislators. Who would be against this (except patent trolls)?
I suspect lots of large companies that do make things but also hold many, many patents would object.
Patents can a potent weapon, especially if you have a lot of them in a specific area. So to answer your question, I would expect opposition from anyone with a big portfolio who wants unencumbered range of motion to use them offensively.
So for specific examples from the little corner of the world focused on here, I suspect and easy ones are Qualcomm and IBM. Probably Microsoft, probably Apple, but they've both surprised on some things recently.
Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
#13I mean, to the author, thank you. Can't believe it cost $150,000+ for the open source community to go through that litigation... Dorsey, and all the SV billionaires who made money off open source, perhaps it's time you "contribute back" by financing the fight against patent trolls...
I understood that it cost Gnome $150k for Gnome to settle and obtain their own exclusive right of usage instead of doing the right thing and fight the patent.
Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
#14I mean, to the author, thank you. Can't believe it cost $150,000+ for the open source community to go through that litigation... Dorsey, and all the SV billionaires who made money off open source, perhaps it's time you "contribute back" by financing the fight against patent trolls...
I understood that it cost Gnome $150k for Gnome to settle and obtain their own exclusive right of usage instead of doing the right thing and fight the patent.
> I understood that it cost Gnome $150k for Gnome to settle and obtain their own exclusive right of usage instead of doing the right thing and fight the patent.
That's what I meant by "going through", they obviously couldn't fight it in court, would have cost a lot more...
Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
#15I mean, to the author, thank you. Can't believe it cost $150,000+ for the open source community to go through that litigation... Dorsey, and all the SV billionaires who made money off open source, perhaps it's time you "contribute back" by financing the fight against patent trolls...
I doubt any of them made any significant money off of the GNOME stack, defending it would be pretty... odd. If someone litigated the OpenSearch, Yarn or Homebrew devs, then yeah, I think it would be reasonable to expect Big Tech to step in. But why GNOME? They've long gone their own way, even making a big deal of their "my way or the highway" development stance. If I was $(MULTIMILLIONAIRE_CORP) I would probably just be laughing, so long as my name wasn't Red Hat.
Come to think of it, why didn't Red Hat step in here? Afaik, their entire raison d'être is keeping lawyers on retainer for these express purposes. Have the GNOME maintainers really burned that many bridges?
Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
#16Could the Gnome foundation move to France to escape software patents?
Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
#17https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-...
> Leigh Rothschild said “I’m pleased that we have managed to settle this issue amicably. I have always supported the innovation of open source software and its developers and encourage its innovation and adoption.”
FOR SURE, BUDDY.
That sounds like something Putin would say after he gets absolutely decimated by the Ukrainians.
Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
#18Man, where was McCoy Smith in the days of the Amiga CD32, which was banned from sale in the USA because of a patent on (I'm not making this up) the XOR bitwise operation?
Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
#19Good on Mr. Smith. But was he in any way involved with the legal defense team for GNOME? The story reads to me like GNOME spent $150k on a legal defense that saved themselves and carved out a little niche for FOSS projects, but otherwise allowed the patent troll to continue profiting from this patent. > Of course, that’s little comfort to the 20+ victims attacked after GNOME with the now-proven-worthless Rothschild ‘…
When GNOME was raising the 150k they said they would not settle and would battle until the patent was overturned. People donated based upon this and then GNOME settled. This is why when things like the he said/she said argument with System 76 have come up I am mystified that some people are ready to believe GNOME's take. They have already shown that they are a project whose leadership's word can't be trusted.
Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights
#20> “offers a number of ways to wirelessly share photos online such as through social media.” How was it possible to patent this in 2018? https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/01/50/f8/a8e7c12...
It was filed in 2008, seemed granted in 2018
Yahoo Photos launched in 2000 - even if it was filed in 2008 that's ridiculous