[nylug-talk] Patent Infringement Lawsuit Filed Against Red Hat & Novell

[Jon Stanley]

I didn't even think about CDE. I was discussing this in #rhel on
freenode today. We all agreed that there was prior art here, but CDE
completely escaped my mind. According to the ComputerWorld story that
I read about this, the patent was granted in 91. Maybe someone older
than me could comment whether this feature existed in CDE in that
timeframe (I think so - I know that it was a standard feature by the
time I started using it in 97).

So the question is why not sue Sun, HP, IBM, and whoever else shipped
CDE? They are certaintly not protecting their patents, and, and any
court should throw this out like a flaming turd.


On 10/12/07, Chris Knadle <Chris.Knadle at coredump.us> wrote:
> On Friday 12 October 2007, Gary Mort wrote:
> > Henning Follmann wrote:
> > > The patent is only related to X11 stuff. So you could run a linux
> server,
> > > which would not be touched by this patent.
> >
> > I just browsed the link, would it have an affect on X11 in general?  It
> > seemed more geared towards KDE or Gnome.  Reading it, it seemed to refer
> > to "multi desktop" environments.  Not windowed apps in general, but
> > having duplicated desktops.
>
>    Not just KDE or Gnome by far; clearly many available X11 window managers
> have had multi-desktop features for a long time.  I mean heck, even CDE had
> these features on commercial Unix more than TEN YEARS AGO, predating the
> existance of Acacia.  Even if it does infringe on the patent(s) in question,
> I think this is a pretty clear case of being beyond the statute of
> limitations to bring the suit.
>    Reading the comments in the Slashdot, Digg, and Groklaw stories on the
> subject also bring another interesting question: if Acacia don't actually
> sell any related product, how can they claim DAMAGES for patent
> infringement?
>
>    No matter which angle I look at this from, it all seems wrong.
>
>    -- Chris
>
> --
>
> Chris Knadle
> Chris.Knadle at coredump.us
>
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