Intology – Intelligent Technology News
Computers Technology Internet Arts Business Science Sports

Open source community is unhappy over Read Hat patent settlement with companies Firestar Software, Inc., DataTern and Amphion Innovations PLC, for an undisclosed sum.

The settlement was about a product Hibernate which Red Hat acquired when it bought JBoss in 2006.

The lawsuit was originally filed by Firestar in 2006 in federal court in the Eastern District of Texas. It alleged violation of U.S. Patent No. 6,101,502 (“’502 patent”), which relates to a method for interfacing an object-oriented software application with a relational database to facilitate access to the relational database. Firestar contended that Hibernate, a JBoss product, infringed the ‘502 patent. Red Hat denied that allegation and vigorously contested the claim.

Red Hat claims that the terms of the settlement will offer broad protection for upstream developers, downstream distributors and Red Hat’s customers. It should encourage the open source community by providing broad protection as to the patents covered by the agreement.

But open source community maintains that the litigants’ ready agreement to such a permissive settlement shows that the patents were dubious.

They argued that Red Hat should have taken the case to court and disputed the patents’ validity. The company could have had the patent struck down thus preventing future litigation against open source projects that use similar technology.

A Red Hat spokesman said the company defended on the basis that its products had not infringed the patent and that the patent was invalid. The parties exchanged information and numerous documents in discovery. Shortly before the argument in federal court, the parties agreed on settlement terms.