Summary: The Acacia troll, a firm which is suspected to be batting for Microsoft, is still harassing GNU/Linux vendors

OUR WIKI page about Acacia ought to provide sufficient background about this patent troll's connections to Microsoft. Acacia's case against GNU/Linux is still on, based on Patently-O:

# IP Innovation v. Red Hat & Novell, Case No. 07–cv-0447; Patent Nos. 5,072,412 and 5,394,521.

The authority behind embargoes, the ITC [1, 2, 3, 4], is stepping in again to hinder innovation and encourage interrogation.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has decided to investigate separate complaints made against Sharp and Research In Motion (RIM) that each allege the companies are infringing patents held by the complainants.

The complaint (ITC number 337-TA-699) against Sharp was made by Samsung Electronics and claims LCD panels and modules made by the Japanese company infringe on Samsung's intellectual property. At its center are patents that cover the generation of high quality images on gray-scale LCDs (U.S. Patent No. 5,844,533), control signalling inside LCD panels (U.S. Patent No. 6,888,585) and a technique for improving image quality (U.S. Patent No. 7,436,479).

Microsoft's race for patents carries on with monopolies on avatars and more software-implemented ideas.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) confirmed that it has patented the use of a realistic Avatar generator. Microsoft also confirmed the following triple A releases for the first half of 2010: Mass Effect 2, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Alan Wake and Crackdown 2.

 

A patent application filed by Microsoft (MSFT) June 19, 2008 and published last Thursday suggests that the company is planning cloud services to configure home networks and provide a number of other maintenance activities, such as user authentication and device provisioning.

Microsoft need not sue rivals with these patents. It just passes these to a patent troll like Acacia to do the "dirty job" [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. These patent arsenals are by all means transferable if knowledge is wrongly assumed to be "property". ⬆