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Posted on 03/04/2009 8:57:26 AM PST by N3WBI3
A small software company on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against open source distributor Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) and several vendors that sell Red Hat products, claiming that Red Hat's JBoss middleware violates one of its patents.
In court papers filed in U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas, Software Tree claims that JBoss infringes its patent on database systems and methods "for exchanging data and commands between an object-oriented system and a relational system."
Software Tree claims the patent in question, U.S. Patent No. 6,163,776, was awarded in December of 2000.
Red Hat acquired open source developer JBoss in 2006 for $420 million. Software Tree contends that certain of Red Hat's JBoss products, including the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, which includes JBoss Hibernate, step on its patent.
"The infringing products have no substantial noninfringing uses," Software Tree says in court papers. The lawsuit also names Dell (Dell), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), and Genuitec as defendants because the companies sell JBoss-based software or include it on their products.
According to its Web site, Software Tree specializes in "providing superior software infrastructure that shifts the application/database integration paradigm." Products include the JDX and NJDX object-relational mapping tools.
Software Tree's partners include Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Borland, and Sun, while customers range from Concert Communications to the Los Alamos National Lab and News Corporation's Kesmai unit.
The company was founded in 1997 by software industry veteran Damodar Das Periwal.
Software Tree is seeking unspecified damages and is asking the court to issue an injunction that would stop the alleged patent infringement. It also is seeking a jury trial.
The U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas is frequently the site of patent actions as it's seen as having rules favorable to plaintiffs. The court was the venue for IBM's patent dispute with Amazon, which was ultimately settled before going to trial.
Red Hat, Dell, HP, and Genuitec have yet to file formal responses to Software Tree's claims.
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Software patents are a cancer.
Im pretty sure there is going to be quite a bit of prior art to this (not to mention its trivial)
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6163776.html
Looks like one of those overly broad patents software litigation farmers get through the system. Probably based on prior art well-known at the time as well. Damn the IP mindset! It’s all thug lawyering and poison to creativity.
Then enforceability of software patents has been greatly exaggerated.
I thought it was recently established that you can't sue downstream providers, or at least that doing so is useless. Maybe that's just my interpretation of the LG v. Quanta suit that got slapped down because LG had exhausted its patent rights with Intel and couldn't chase the downstream provider Quanta. All these distributors would be immune if the suit fails or if it succeeds and Red Hat licenses the patent.
Redhat is no longer a down stream provider, they own JBoss
They sued downstream providers such as Dell.
Unless Microsoft offers some of their billions of cash to support this “partner” behind the scenes (ala SCO), I suspect that RH, Dell, HP, et al have enough deep pockets and deep benches of legal beagles to bankrupt this little company- especially if there is any prior art or they can show that it is trivial or obvious.
I seem to remember a couple of other patent troll companies who have ended up with the extremely short end of the stick after trying to extort beeelyuns and beeeelyuns of sheckels from some well heeled companies on software patent actions recently.
And with their “partner” IBM having been on the receiving end of some of these patent troll actions, I would suspect that IBM will soon be known as a “former partner”.
Just my thoughts...
Whats bod for JBoss is good for IBM with BEA putting Weblogic prices up high JBoss had become the cheap alternative to WAS
May be the key to the story:
“Software Tree’s partners include Microsoft... “
Which makes for a very interesting position for Microsoft to be in, as MS has recently entered into a partnership with Red Hat as well.
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