Will sue for income

Phil Hartstein, CEO of Finjan (Photo credit: Courtesy), via Times of Israel

Summary: The patent aggressor known as Finjan Holdings (originally subsidised by Microsoft) is celebrated by one of the most overzealous sites of patent lawyers as it continues to sue practicing companies

WE previously wrote about a firm called Finjan, which does much of its business by suing companies, not actually creating much of its own. A lot of people do not know that Finjan is Microsoft-connected (in the ownership sense), as we noted here before.

"Microsoft has many tentacles, including patent trolls. Finjan Holdings is one of several to keep an eye on."We were rather disgusted to see this public relations parade (press releases [1, 2] from various parties), all citing the highly-biased Intellectual Asset Management (IAM), which we criticised here before. These are patent maximalists with little shame or dignity. See the latest appalling propaganda from IAM (patent extremism one might call it). What they are basically doing is framing Finjan and its CEO, Phil Hartstein, as some kind of heroic subjects.

Please note that this article from earlier this month reminds us that Finjan (now known as "Finjan Holdings", apparently) is still attacking practising companies like Symantec.

Microsoft has many tentacles, including patent trolls. Finjan Holdings is one of several to keep an eye on. One day it might choose to pick on (harass or sue) Free/Open Source software (FOSS) actors.

Another Microsoft-connected entity, Black Duck, is now amplifying the "FOSS is not secure" message with this plugin for its proprietary software (covered by software patents). To quote the press release:

Free Jenkins plugin empowers developers to rapidly identify known open source security vulnerabilities

Yesterday we wrote about the campaign to characterise FOSS as not secure, using misleading branding of FOSS bugs [1, 2, 3] (often branded by partners of Microsoft if not Microsoft itself). Black Duck has been using these bug "brands" to sell its services in the media, including in the IDG network. ⬆