House Committee Approves Patent Reform Legislation Favored by Software Companies

For all of the hype these days over enormous jury verdicts -- including the record $1.5 billion judgement against Microsoft Corp. in March -- few juries ever decide a patent dispute. The huge stakes and the unpredictability of juries ensure that "most companies choke down some kind of a settlement or licensing deal," says veteran patent litigator Woody Jameson, a partner at Duane Morris in Atlanta. And, of course, the cost of just getting in front of a jury is staggering: a big patent trial now costs each side more than $4 million to try.

"If [Microsoft] found the knife, they'd use it -- but I don't think they found the knife," Bottomley says, referring to patent violations. He rattled off a few of the Linux community's defenses: "Patent law is supposed to protect people who wish to publish their ideas. I suspect these ideas were never published. Whoever invented [something] first is entitled to the patent -- it wouldn't be unlikely to be [the open source community], in which case the patent would be invalid."

Then there is Oracle licensing agreement with the Open Invention Network, formed in 2005 to protect Linux from patent threats. By agreeing to a royalty free license to the OIN patents Oracle also agreed not to assert its patents against the Linux operating system.

So if you can avoid suing anyone for patent infringement related to those 150 standards, you’re safe from IBM, and if you’re using any form of Linux, you are safe from patent infringement claims made by Oracle.

Now, that sounds like peace of mind.