patents

Supreme Court to hear LG patent case

The Supreme Court said Tuesday that it will consider a patent case between LG Electronics and a group of Taiwanese companies, including Quanta Computer, according to Reuters.

The case could have far-reaching implications on the computer industry because it would determine whether patent holders can receive royalties from various companies as the product moves its way through the manufacturing chain.

LG claimed that the companies infringed on its patents on microprocessor chips in its computers. But Quanta and the other Taiwanese companies said LG licensed its technology to Intel, which made microprocessor chips that it sold to the companies.

The … Read more

Open Season on open source, part 2

I'm loving doing this podcast series with The Register's Ashlee Vance and MuleSource's Dave Rosenberg. We dubbed it "Open Season," and often with good reason. In this last installment, we talked about a range of open source topics, including:

Patent protection and open source, focusing on Novell's Moonlight project Ubuntu's mini server OS for VMware The 'Calista Flockhart' hypervisor from VMware Net App sues Sun and Fishworks BEA disses open source InfoWorld's Best of Open Source list Developers and salespeople learning how to do open source Good documentation equals dollars Other topics.... … Read more

NTP, the sequel

The famous quote "there are no second acts in American lives" is attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald. According to BrainyQuote.com, he also said, "his was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours."

The convoluted story of NTP and evolution of the American patent system is enough to drive a man to drink. Having beaten the literary metaphors well into the ground, let's ponder NTP's second act on the tech industry stage.

As you may have heard, NTP is once again feeling litigious. Last week it … Read more

NTP files patent suits against AT&T, Sprint and Verizon

Remember NTP? They're back.

The holding company that brought BlackBerry Nation to its knees in 2006 is once again on the advance, this time filing suit against AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. The suit was filed last week (PDF) in Richmond, Va., home to the last round of legal tussling between NTP and Research In Motion, maker of the BlackBerry.

Way back in 2002, NTP won a jury verdict that RIM infringed on patents held by the late Thomas Campana for a wireless e-mail system. RIM tried several times to overturn that verdict on appeal but never … Read more

White House opposes tech-backed patent bill

As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to vote as soon as Friday on sweeping changes to the U.S. patent system, the Bush administration is registering its opposition to the high-tech industry-backed bill.

A policy statement by the Office of Management and Budget (PDF) sent to the House Rules Committee on Thursday argues that the Patent Reform Act of 2007 proposes a number of "unneccessary" changes to patent law.

The office's biggest beef seems to be a section that prescribes how courts should award damages to patent holders who prevail in infringement cases--a provision that … Read more

Sun calls NetApp's blog bluff...with open source...in a blog

It's fascinating to see how blogs are being used these days.

On Wednesday, Dave Hitz, co-founder of NetApp, used his blog to explicate the company's reasons for suing Sun Microsystems over ZFS patent infringement. On Thursday, Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun, fired back using his own blog, telling a very different story from Hitz's.

And, when I asked NetApp to respond to why it had chosen to respond to Sun now, rather than when Sun announced it was open-sourcing ZFS, Hitz replied...in a comment to my blog.

This is a very new world we live in. It's also one that Schwartz is convinced open source will win, as he suggests (in his blog):… Read more

Network Appliance sues Sun over ZFS patent infringement - what this means for open source

Network Appliance just announced that it is suing Sun Microsystems for patent infringement related to Sun's ZFS technology. Dave Hitz, co-founder and executive vice president of NetApp, pinged me to notify me of the suit and referenced his blog. I'll be following up with Sun's position on the suit as soon as it becomes clear.

From Dave:

About 18 months ago, Sun's lawyers contacted NetApp with a list of patents they say we infringe, and requested that we pay them lots of money. We responded in two ways. First, we closely examined their list of patents. Second, we identified the patents in our portfolio that we believe Sun infringes.… Read more

Microsoft, Eolas settle patent dispute

Microsoft has settled a long-running and expensive lawsuit with Eolas Technologies, a start-up backed by the University of California that alleged Internet Explorer infringed a patent.

"We're pleased to be able to reach an amicable resolution in this long-running dispute with Eolas and the University of California," the company said in a statement Thursday, but declined to share further details. Eolas couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The suit concerned technology that lets Web browsers call up separate applications or plug-ins such as Flash or Java within a Web page. While at the University of California … Read more

The best defense is a good offense

Who knew squirrels could be so smart? Apparently, California squirrels are fed up with rattlesnakes and so do what each of us would do under similar circumstances:

Heat up our tails and shake them vigorously at the snakes.

But apparently it isn't just a reflex, because they only do it with rattlesnakes.

Confronted by gopher snakes, which can't sense heat, the squirrels wave their tails vigorously, but don't bother to heat them up.

It makes me wonder why we don't do the same to Microsoft and other would-be predators on open source.… Read more