rmartish

It seems Novell is in a roll they have just won another case this time with Red Hat against IP Innovation LLC, a unit of Acacia Research Corp. It seems that IP Innovation LLC accused Red Hat and Novell of infringing three patents that cover a computer-based graphical user interface that spans multiple workplaces, and lets users access icons remotely, according to court documents.

Red Hat had this on their web site:
RALEIGH, N.C., Apr 30, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, announced that today a jury in federal court in Marshall, Texas, returned a verdict in favor of Red Hat, Inc. and Novell, Inc. in a case alleging patent infringement brought by IP Innovation LLC, a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation and Technology Licensing Corporation. The patents at issue were found to be invalid and worthless.

"This is the result we expected and we are gratified that the jury recognized the tremendous innovative value of open source software. The jury knocked out three invalid patents that were masquerading as a new and important invention, when they were not," said Michael Cunningham, Executive Vice President at Red Hat. "We appreciate the jury's wisdom and remain committed to providing value to our customers, including through our Open Source Assurance program. We also remain stalwart in resisting bogus shakedown tactics."

Congratulations to Both Red Hat and Novell for not backing down when they knew they where right.

Tags: Red Hat | Novell | Patents

rmartish

Today March 30, 2010 a U.S. District Court jury has said that Novell not SCO owns Unix copyrights. Without the copyrights, SCO has nothing. SCO no longer has a significant claim that can be made against Linux. After seven years of legal wrangling and after a three-week trial that pitted the two companies over the question of which owned the copyrights the Federal jury has said that SCO never owned Unix's IP (intellectual property) in the first place.

This case had its roots in 2003 when SCO sued IBM for allegedly using Unix code to make improvements to Linux. Novell then said it, not SCO, owned the copyrights to Unix. Novell retracted that statement after SCO showed it an amendment to the sales agreement but then restated its ownership claims a few months later and said SCO had no right to pursue IBM.

All the Linux and Open Source Community can rejoice that the good guys won again.

Tags: IBM | SCO | Novell | Linux