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Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

blog.opensource.org

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Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#181

Post by tssva »

tedivm wrote: post #24
tssva wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

According to the Gnome website they didn't have to pay their lawyers, so I'm wondering where that money went. > GNOME was represented pro-bono by Matt Berkowitz, Kieran Kieckhefer, Joy Wang and Larry Crouch from Shearman & Sterling LLP. https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-...

The GNOME Foundation defense fund donation website for this case is still open and accepting donations. In fact donations have been made to it recently. Why hasn't the site been shutdown or the text at the site modified to reflect that the suit has been long settled by the GNOME Foundation?

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#182

Post by throwaway82652 »

tssva wrote: post #180
throwaway82652 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am mystified that some people are ready to believe GNOME's take I won't comment on the issue itself, but the way you're framing this is total and complete nonsense. GNOME didn't have a "take", it was a blog written independently by one developer. You're confusing the Foundation itself with random developers. AFAIK System 76 also never put out any official statements, it was again more random unofficial statements…

I'm not confusing a lone developer with the GNOME Foundation. I was referencing statements made in a GNOME Foundation press release.

I have no idea which press release you're talking about, every search I did on the subject turned up this news article or another one with very similar content, where there's no official press release: https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/10/system76_gnome_deskto...

Searching through the foundation's news posts shows only one press release about system76, which is positive in tone and isn't related to any argument: https://foundation.gnome.org/?s=system76

If you could post this press release so I could read it, that would be great. Maybe I'm just stupid and I missed something obvious. But I think you may be misremembering this.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#183

Post by yencabulator »

tedivm wrote: post #176
throwaway82652 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying devs and designers to do what? Testing for what? To make a product more profitable so you can further grow the foundation? If it's not doing social outreach or otherwise fulfilling the social mission of the nonprofit then I hope you understand it falls in that category and they can't legally do that, go to any of the member companies if you want that. When these nonprofits hire actual engineers and designers i…

I wish you were wrong. I just looked this up out of curiousity, and Gnome themselves had their charity status denied by the IRS for this reason- > You have a substantial nonexempt purpose because you develop software published under open source compatible licenses that authorize use by any person for any purpose, including nonexempt purposes such as commercial, recreational, or personal purposes, including campaign i…

Uhh, the Linux Foundation is a non-profit that sponsors people to work on Linux the kernel. How's that possible then?

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#184

Post by [deleted] »

hda2 wrote: post #158
tedivm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Gnome website they didn't have to pay their lawyers, so I'm wondering where that money went. > GNOME was represented pro-bono by Matt Berkowitz, Kieran Kieckhefer, Joy Wang and Larry Crouch from Shearman & Sterling LLP. https://foundation.gnome.org/2020/05/20/patent-case-against-...

> I'm wondering where that money went. I was wondering the same about the $1M donation they got in 2018. Turns out they misallocated a significant portion of it to things like social outreach programs. There is nothing wrong with having SRPs if you're a multi-billion tech giant, but a underfunded open source product shouldn't be wasting money on social programs when their primary product was broken (which, in 2018, g…

[deleted]

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#185

Post by throwaway82652 »

yencabulator wrote: post #183
tedivm wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish you were wrong. I just looked this up out of curiousity, and Gnome themselves had their charity status denied by the IRS for this reason- > You have a substantial nonexempt purpose because you develop software published under open source compatible licenses that authorize use by any person for any purpose, including nonexempt purposes such as commercial, recreational, or personal purposes, including campaign i…

Uhh, the Linux Foundation is a non-profit that sponsors people to work on Linux the kernel. How's that possible then?

That's an extremely small percentage, most Linux developers aren't sponsored by the Linux Foundation. The majority of their expenses go towards events and training.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#186

Post by yencabulator »

throwaway82652 wrote: post #185
yencabulator wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh, the Linux Foundation is a non-profit that sponsors people to work on Linux the kernel. How's that possible then?

That's an extremely small percentage, most Linux developers aren't sponsored by the Linux Foundation. The majority of their expenses go towards events and training.

So you're saying it's a question of the threshold of "substantial". Okay, I can believe that.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#187

Post by throwaway82652 »

yencabulator wrote: post #186
throwaway82652 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an extremely small percentage, most Linux developers aren't sponsored by the Linux Foundation. The majority of their expenses go towards events and training.

So you're saying it's a question of the threshold of "substantial". Okay, I can believe that.

Not really, the question is how the organization is classified. Linux Foundation is a 501(c)(6) so they can sponsor some people but it's only for the purposes of furthering "common business interests" and not for profit.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#188

Post by pabs3 »

codedokode wrote: post #81

This seems like a loss. Gnome and other companies had to pay money (as I understand) for an invalid patent, a patent lawyer had to pay for re-examination and a patent troll lost nothing except for a patent that was invalid anyway. Are vaguely worded patents legal? For example, if someone in the age of black-and-white TV would patent an idea that "colors can be transmitted wirelessly or by wire, decoded or not decoded…

GNOME never paid money to the patent troll.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#189

Post by coreDNA123 »

Leigh Rothschild, the troll in chief : https://www.linkedin.com/in/leigh-rothschild-bab450b/

Every once in a wile I get baffled by how american justice system is broken, lacks common sense and cannot be reformed. Aren't the judge able to spot such abusive and predatory patent trolls that attacks only small and weak companies that have no means to defend themselves? Here where I live each time I discuss US justice system I get reminded of this probably false story of the woman that sued and won against a microwave company because they didn't state in the manual that you cant dry your pet in the microwave, and killed her dog or whatever. Such inhuman system rewards just stupidity and greed.

Re: Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights

#190

Post by nullc »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #42

> none is as powerful as challenging the nefarious patents directly Why don't we see this deployed against competitors? I get why the big boys wouldn't want to rock the boat. But hiring a patent lawyer to go through a competitor's patents and challenge the ones they think could be flimsy sounds like a decent way to, at the very least, distract them.

"It's a poor atom blaster that won't point both ways.". There are all sorts of competitive attacks that don't happen because they can go both ways. You also don't see companies having their competitors corporate executives followed by PIs and then sending pictures showing their adultery to the tabloids.

Besides, if you try and fail you effectively strengthen the patent. Better to wait to try to undermine the patents they specifically try to assert against you-- 75% percent of patents lose claims on re-exam, so the patent holder knows they will likely have their scope narrowed which makes them more likely to agree to license or not enforce at all against a wealthy competitor (e.g. one that could afford to go after their patents preemptively). If the patent has already been re-examined the patent holder would have reason to be more aggressive and less compromising.

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