Summary: Examining some of the latest software patents that make this week’s headlines and what we can learn from these

SOFTWARE patents are dying in the US, owing largely to § 101 (post-Alice). Patent lawyers, as expected, are in denial about it (misleading customers in order to maintain demand) and there is a new article today/this week about § 101 analysis. Mentioned therein is a “conclusion that the claims at issue fail to meet the standard for patent eligibility under § 101.”

“The significance of this outcome is that once again (as before) we see software patents — once challenged enough, scrutinised properly and reassessed sufficiently — falling short.”The de facto ban on “abstract” software patents (that ought to cover all software patents) does not deter everyone, especially not deep-pocketed companies which simply hoard thousands (if not tens of thousands of patents) and then cross-license or shake down companies in bulk. According to dozens of news reports from yesterday (e.g. [1, 2, 3]), Amazon continues to patent software (this patent for audio surveillance) and today we learn that Disney tries patenting foot surveillance in parks. Talk about lack of ethics… Amazon has pushed software patents as far as Europe in spite of the clear exclusions.

As we mentioned here briefly at the start of this week, VirnetX's software patent attack on Apple is falling short, as does the stock of VirnetX [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. VirnetX is a patent troll whose existence (or worth) is little more than software patents, so the loss of the case (or at least a $625,000,000 award) was big news yesterday [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15], not just in Apple-centric sites.

The significance of this outcome is that once again (as before) we see software patents — once challenged enough, scrutinised properly and reassessed sufficiently — falling short. Time to leave East Texas for a balanced venue? It’s probably a waste of time (and money) trying to assert these patents in a court of law, especially against large companies that can afford to withstand/endure lots of motions and appeals. That’s why the main victims of software patents (and patent trolls) are small businesses; they would often settle rather than risk the high cost of never-ending legal proceedings. The SCO case has gone on for 13 years because IBM can afford this and SCO, whose only remaining existence is this one case, goes to the grave (well past bankruptcy) in a desperate effort to extract some money (much like VirnetX).█

Publicado en GNU/Linux, IBM, Microsoft, SCO, UNIX at 12:26 pm por el Dr. Roy Schestowitz

See Lawrence R. Goldfarb (Wikipedia)

Sumario: el caso SCO no ha acabado todavía, y permanece no claro quié esta subsidiando el caso

El caso SCO “se levanta de la tumba de nuevo,” dice hoy el titular de los medios Británicos (que lanzaron la historia). Esta historia que podría ser del 2009, 2010 y todo hasta el 2016. Nunca acaba. ¿De dónde viene el financiamiénto?

“Bueno, SCO levanta de la tumba o tal vez la información no era exacta. Se nos ha dicho esto durante 7 años y hasta hace 2 meses nosotros dudamos que esto fue el final de todo.”Bueno, SCO levanta de la tumba o tal vez la información no era exacta. Se nos ha dicho esto durante 7 años y hasta hace 2 meses nosotros dudamos que esto fue el final de todo. La razón que relmente no creímos que es el final de toda esa litigación es todo ese modelo de Groklaw (o medios citando Groklaw) de decir que estaba lejos de terminar. Groklaw todavía esta publicando PDFs que se relacionan a este caso y medios Británicos los citan (sabiéndo magicamente donde estos documentos están). Para citar a The Inquirer: “En un comunicado, el juez David Nuffer argumentó que “la naturaleza de las reclamaciones son tales que ninguna corte de apelación tendría que decidir los mismos problemas más de una vez si había alguna posteriores recursos”, efectívamente sugiriéndo que el caso tiene para rato.

“El 1 de marzo, que la presentación fue respaldada por una explicación completa del juez, declarando vencedor IBM enfático en la larga saga.”

“Se ordena y se adjudicó que de acuerdo con las órdenes del tribunal presentó el 10 de julio, 2013 5 de febrero de 2016, y 8 de febrero, 2016, se dictó sentencia a favor del acusado y las causas de los demandantes de acción son despedidos con prejuicio” se indica en el documento.”

“Para implementar exitósamente E.E.E. algo que debes dar es la impresión de buenas intenciones.”“Ahora, sin embargo, SCO se ha presentado una vez más para apelar la sentencia aunque, con precisión los motivos que aún reclaman no se han dado a conocer.”

También afirma que “no es claro quién continúa financiando el caso.” Bueno, talvez pregunten eso a Microsoft. Insiste que todavía “ama a Linux” mientras al mismo tiempo saca un E.E.E. sobre el (incluso hace unas horas). Para implementar exitósamente E.E.E. algo que debes dar es la impresión de buenas intenciones. █

“…Microsoft quiso promover a SCO y su juicio pendiente contra IBM y el sistema operativo Linux. Pero Microsoft no quiso ser visto como atacando IBM o Linux.”

–Larry Goldfarb, BayStar, accionista clave en SCO abordado por Microsoft

Summary: SCO case not over yet, and it remains unclear who’s still subsidising the case

The SCO case “rises from the grave again,” says today’s headline from the British media (which broke the story). This story looks like it could be from 2009, 2010 and all the way to 2016. It just never ends. Where does the funding even come from?

“Well, SCO rises from the grave or maybe the reporting was just not accurate. We have been told this for 7 years and even 2 months ago we doubted this was the end of it all.”Well, SCO rises from the grave or maybe the reporting was just not accurate. We have been told this for 7 years and even 2 months ago we doubted this was the end of it all. The reason we didn't really believe it's the end of all that litigation is Groklaw’s pattern (or media quoting Groklaw) of stating it’s all pretty much over. Groklaw is still uploading PDFs which relate to this case and British media cites them (magically knowing where files are located). To quote The Inquirer: “In a filing, Judge David Nuffer argued that “the nature of the claims are such that no appellate court would have to decide the same issues more than once if there were any subsequent appeals”, effectively suggesting that the case had more than run its course.

“On 1 March, that filing was backed up by the judge’s full explanation, declaring IBM the emphatic victor in the long-running saga.

“”IT IS ORDERED AND ADJUDGED that pursuant to the orders of the court entered on July 10, 2013, February 5, 2016, and February 8, 2016, judgment is entered in favour of the defendant and plaintiff’s causes of action are dismissed with prejudice,” stated the document.

“To successfully E.E.E. something you must give the impression of good intentions.”“Now, though, SCO has filed yet again to appeal that judgment, although the precise grounds it is claiming haven’t yet been disclosed.”

It also states that “it’s unclear who continues to bankroll the case.” Well, maybe ask Microsoft. It insists that it “loves Linux” while pulling an E.E.E. on it (even just a few hours ago). To successfully E.E.E. something you must give the impression of good intentions. █

“…Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux.”

–Larry Goldfarb, BayStar, key investor in SCO approached by Microsoft

See Lawrence R. Goldfarb (Wikipedia)

Summary: An important reminder of the role Microsoft played in SCO’s massive (multi-billion), never-ending attacks on the legitimacy and the cost of Linux

IS the SCO saga “over”? That’s what they told us half a decade ago, yet today’s (and yesterday’s) headlines [1-4] suggest this is definitely it, no matter what happens next. Novell was actually “over” a long time before SCO was truly “over” (“don’t make me over,” it perpetually insists and shouts at the judges, like Dianne Warwick while throwing her now-famous fit at Burt Bacharach and Hal David), unless one counts the “Novell” brand which was carried forward, or abandoned efforts/teams such as Mono/Ximian, which based on this news from Phoronix is already being used for E.E.E. (this time involving Vulkan), shortly after Microsoft tied the knot. Don’t ever forget Microsoft’s true colours. The company hates GNU/Linux with a great passion; it just tries to hide it while working to undermine GNU/Linux. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Win for Open Source: SCO Court Case against Linux Hits End of Road

   The case was opened in 2003, when SCO filed a $1B claim against IBM. The suit alleged that IBM had inserted some code from Unix, over which SCO claimed ownership, into the Linux kernel.

2. SCO vs. IBM looks like it’s over for good

   The long-running SCO vs. IBM case looks like it might just be over.

   A new filing (PDF) scooped up by the good folks at Groklaw sees both SCO and IBM agree to sign off on two recent decisions in which SCO’s arguments advancing its claims to own parts of Unix were slapped down by the US District Court.

   As The Register reads the PDF we’ve linked to above, and our informal legal counsel concurs, the new document describes IBM and SCO both signing off on the recent court orders. Those orders left SCO without a legal argument to stand on.

   The new filing also points out that SCO remains bankrupt and has “has de minimis financial resources beyond the value of the claims on which the Court has granted summary judgment for IBM.”

   Or in plain English, SCO is broke and the only asset it possess of any value is its claims against IBM, and now it doesn’t even have those because it just lost a court case about them. That leaves SCO in no position to carry on.

   “Accordingly,” the new filing continues, “the disposition of SCO’s appeal is the practical course most likely to conserve both judicial and private resources.” That’s the legal sense of “disposition”, by the way, so what the document’s saying is that SCO giving up its appeal is most likely to stop the courts spending any more time or energy on this matter. Courts don’t like wasting resources. So this is both parties explaining that wrapping things up now is a desirable thing.

3. Gentoo Choice, Awful Fedora 24, Debian Firefox

   Today in Linux news the Ubuntu ZFS controversy isn’t quite settled after all. Fedora’s Adam Williamson today blogged, ” Lots of stuff is busted. We are aware of this, and fixing it. Hold onto your hats.” Richard Freeman reminded folks the systemd disagreements aren’t over either and Debian has finally stopped renaming Firefox to Iceweasel. Dedoimedo said today that Mepis derivative MX-15 is on the “highway to rad” and Christine Hall signed SCO’s death warrant.

4. SCO Is Undeniably and Reliably Dead

   It appears as if SCO’s case against IBM, which began as a blustering tornado back in 2003, finally died with a whimper last week. The death notice came in the form of what is essentially a one page agreement between SCO and IBM which calls “for certification of the entry of final judgment on the Court’s orders concerning all of SCO’s claims….”

–Bruce Perens

Summary: The SCO case is still going on and Microsoft has just signed a patent deal with GoPro over its FOSS-based software, relating to “certain file storage and other system technologies”

THE ‘new’ Microsoft is not new. It’s the same old Microsoft — the company that committed crimes to get where it is today. The SCO case makes a return to some headlines, not just in FOSS sites but also in general (but technology-centric) news sites. Groklaw is still uploading new documents [PDF] and FOSS Force wrote: “Judge David Nuffer with the US District Court in Utah gave SCO another day in court last week and returned a judgement against the bankrupt company.”

“It’s the same old Microsoft — the company that committed crimes to get where it is today.”The Register wrote: “The SCO Group has suffered another reversal in its long-running attempt to squeeze some cash out of IBM for allegedly pinching its code and tossing it into Linux and maybe AIX too.”

Remember that this is a Microsoft-funded (in least in part) attack on Linux. It’s over a decade old. It’s nearly 13 years in the making. As Larry Goldfarb from BayStar, a key investor in SCO, once put it: “Microsoft wished to promote SCO and its pending lawsuit against IBM and the Linux operating system. But Microsoft did not want to be seen as attacking IBM or Linux.”

Yes, Microsoft loves to hide between or behind proxies, otherwise it might jeopardise the lie which is “Microsoft loves Linux.” It might make it harder for Microsoft to seduce fools into Azure for GNU/Linux hosting.

When it comes to patents too, there are Microsoft-connected FRAND lobbyists, as we last noted yesterday, on the same day that WIPR wrote: “Companies that own standard-essential patents (SEPs) must stick to their obligation of licensing them on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, the EU commissioner for competition has said.”

“It might make it harder for Microsoft to seduce fools into Azure for GNU/Linux hosting.”The commissioner ought to have mentioned the problems that SEPs FRAND in its own right poses. It’s incompatible with Free/Open Source software (FOSS), and not by accident. There are standard-essential patents where interoperability between file systems is required. See the Samba case (in Europe, where Microsoft fought for file sharing monopoly) and then recall the Microsoft v. TomTom case, where Microsoft fought for a software patents tax in Europe (where such patents are not even legal), impacting Linux itself. FRAND is a vehicle for pushing software patents into Europe and Microsoft loves FRAND for this reason. Remember when Microsoft did this kind of FRAND lobbying with the BSA.

Right now, after Alice, Microsoft is still utilising software patents in an effort to tax everything, exploiting its monopoly to make the tax inescapable. The ‘new’ Microsoft is extorting Android and Linux using software patents on file systems, still (probably exFAT if not FAT also, as per the TomTom case). This new article from WIPR states: “Microsoft has signed a patent licensing deal with action camera maker GoPro.

“According to statement from Microsoft on Friday, February 5, the agreement covers “certain file storage and other system technologies”.

“And some people honestly believe that Microsoft has changed…”“The terms of the deal, in which Microsoft is the licensor, have been kept confidential.

GoPro, based on its own Web site, uses a lot of FOSS, Linux included (and Android is a key target platform). So what we see here is Microsoft engaging in patent extortion against FOSS, yet again.

And some people honestly believe that Microsoft has changed… █

–Bruce Perens

Summary: Despite Microsoft’s continued assault on GNU/Linux, Canonical is foolish enough to give Microsoft control over many Ubuntu instances

MICROSOFT is fooling the GNU/Linux world when it says it “loves Linux”. Based on its actions in this past month alone [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], Microsoft very much hates GNU/Linux and fights it viciously. More than ten years ago Microsoft paid SCO and look how long-lasting the impact of this backing has become. Tom Harvey’s latest report (he is usually pro-SCO) overstates the chances of the lawsuit not being tossed out preemptively as every time in recent memory. Suing for huge sums does not equate to merit, but Harvey floats the claim of “damages of $5 billion” as if there’s a change that SCO will ever see any money at all. Quoting Harvey’s report:

Nearly 12 years after it was filed, a lawsuit against IBM Corp. that riled the open-source computer code community is back on the federal court docket in Utah.

The nearly defunct Utah company SCO Group Inc. and IBM filed a joint report to the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City saying that legal issues remain in the case, which was initiated in 2003 with SCO claiming damages of $5 billion against the technology giant, based in Armonk, N.Y.

This received more attention than it deserved because of the headline, which reads: “It’s alive! Utah software company’s decade-old suit against IBM revived” (drama over substance).

Microsoft is now swapping money for power (which begets money) in its patent extortion strategy. Samsung has been a top “asset” (like a “high value target”) and Kyocera may be next. It’s all about control. Microsoft now has greater control over Samsung (and by extension over Android), owing to blackmail followed by settlement.

One way or another we should deduce from this that Microsoft’s nefarious attacks on Linux using patents and/or copyrights are not over. Nevertheless, Canonical decided to mimic Novell’s footsteps only in the sense that Canonical trusts Microsoft to prop it up a bit. As FOSS Force put it last week: “There’s little doubt that a few eyebrows were raised by the news on Friday, when Larry Cafiero reported on FOSS Force about Canonical’s partnership with Microsoft involving Microsoft’s OCS hardware and Ubuntu’s open source Metal-as-a-Service (MAAS) deployment product. Those with a little memory might wonder if this is a case of history repeating itself, as we’ve seen Microsoft court aspiring princess distros before, with SUSE, not long after the distro was purchased by Novell, a company with an uneven history.”

The author recalls that “In November, 2006, three years after acquiring SUSE, Novell received an eleventh hour bail out when it entered into a joint compatibility and patent agreement with Microsoft. In the pact, Microsoft agreed to pay SUSE $348 million up front and $46 million annually for five years, with return payment by Novell being mainly in the form of support subscriptions for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES).”

The conclusion is as follows: “So what does the old SUSE/Microsoft deal have to do with Ubuntu and Redmond’s new partnership arrangement? The quick answer: everything and nothing. Or, perhaps more appropriate for this stage of the game: It’s too soon to tell. One thing’s for sure, even if the deal turns out to be benign and never develops into anything as toxic as SUSE/Microsoft has been, this is sure to develop into something of a brouhaha in the FOSS user community. At the very least, this will become a hot topic on the forums.”

This was posted after Cafiero had written that “Canonical trumpets its partnership with Microsoft — yep, Microsoft — this week at the Open Compute Summit, where the Isle of Man reached across to Redmond to demonstrate how Canonical and Microsoft are working together to create scalable, OCP-compliant architecture.”

Here is Canonical’s original statement, some press coverage, and a blog post stating that “Canonical Deepens Partnership with Microsoft”.

Microsoft had used Novell not just for patent extortion. It later used it for Linux Foundation and events intrusion (like a free press or ticket), HyperV promotion, OOXML promotion, .NET promotion (through Mono), and Silverlight promotion (through Moonlight).

Canonical does not need Microsoft. “MS is reported to have only 10% share of the cloud,” writes Robert Pogson in response to Microsoft propagandist Tony Bradley, so what is Canonical thinking? Microsoft needs Canonical more than Canonical needs Microsoft. When Microsoft says it is changing, well… this is correct; unlike before, it is now embracing and extending (to extinguish) FOSS. It’s s strategic change. It is easy to envision how some time in the future Microsoft will offer ‘in-cloud’ conversions from Ubuntu to Windows. If Microsoft decided to patent the business method of embrace, extend and extinguish (EEE), it would probably not ‘license’ it to anyway. It is its secret weapon and Canonical should be smart enough to know this. █

Summary: Possibilities of lawsuits of interest that target Microsoft rivals and help discourage public participation (like SLAPP but bigger)

THE mysterious company that had famously sued Microsoft (VirnetX) and got paid a huge amount of money from Microsoft recently sued Apple again. It is on a path of destruction:

VirnetX Holding Corp. (NYSE MKT: VHC) today announced that on August 7, 2013, it signed a Patent License Agreement (the “Agreement”) with Avaya Inc. Under the terms of the Agreement, VirnetX has agreed to license certain of its patents to Avaya, in exchange for multiple payments to VirnetX and an ongoing reasonable royalty for future sales through the expiration of the licensed patents as outlined in the Agreement with respect to certain current and future IP-encrypted products. In further consideration, Avaya has agreed to license certain of its patents to VirnetX for its ongoing Gabriel technology product development.

Now that Apple is suing Samsung we should remember that any such troll which Microsoft and Apple pay can go after Android and GNU/Linux, equipped with precedence. Think of Nokia and its patent arrangements with Microsoft and Apple. Here is the latest from Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung:

There will be a hearing in Apple v. Samsung I in Judge Lucy Koh’s courtroom, Courtroom 8 on the 4th floor, on August 21 at 2:00 PM, so if any of you stalwarts can attend, that would be fabulous. You don’t even have to wake up early.

What’s it about? Didn’t they just have a case management hearing in April? Why yes. Yes, they did, but there have been “progress and changes” since, according to the parties’ Joint Case Management Statement [PDF], which fills us in on the details. Both parties would like some changes since the last case management hearing. Here’s the last joint case management statement, back in April. And the judge’s order on April 30 was to go forward immediately with the damages trial, unless certain things happened in the USPTO reexaminations of Apple’s patents at issue. Some of those things have almost happened, and there are other quirks, so some changes are being requested.

An article by Richard Hillesley, titled “the litigation business”, reminds us of the notion of lawsuits by proxy:

SCO’s action against IBM and others failed, but reflects a fashion in the technology industries – not restricted to SCO – for replacing innovation and business with teams of lawyers and threats of litigation, says Richard Hillesley

Lawsuits that involve patents — not copyrights — are the next wave of FUD against FOSS. Steam, a company whose CEO is “formerly” of Microsoft, has another legal tie with Microsoft created:

Jason Holtman, who spearheaded Valve’s Steam business for eight years before leaving the company in February, has a new job.

The former lawyer has taken a job with Microsoft, with a focus on PC gaming and entertainment strategy. Because he has just started at the position, Holtman declined an interview request, but confirmed the move.

Lawyer, not a technical guy. Will he help sue Microsoft’s competition over patents? Maybe, but ether way, it is important to keep track of these movement because entities like Acacia absorbed lawyers from Microsoft shortly before suing GNU/Linux from multiple fronts. █

Summary: Microsoft staff which infiltrates the opposition is smearing this opposition from the inside and pushing Microsoft’s proprietary software deep within

We are still seeing that typical smear from Walli [1, 2, 3] and fellow Microsoft staff who try to demonise FOSS users, calling them “freeloaders”. This is not the first time we see this insult, but why does Red Hat give Microsoft’s Walli a platform with which to spread the insulting ideas? Here is the link (don’t click) and here is some more brainwashing where Microsoft interviews Microsoft on Linux (at a Microsoft site), grooming another puppet and infiltrator like Hilf and Ramji [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] before he quit. This one is K.Y. Srinivasan, whom we wrote about in relation to what he does inside Linux. Some Microsoft Web site recently pushed some articles repeatedly, trying to paint Microsoft as a friend of Linux. Will they kindly just step away and stop insulting Free software advocates while pushing Microsoft into everybody’s life, even GNU/Linux users?

People will never forget how Microsoft bankrolled the SCO case, which more than a decade later is still going on:

SCO is saying, we don’t have the copyrights. But we had contracts. The “among other things” means they have more in mind they don’t wish to tell us about yet, as is SCO’s wont. It’s about post-1995 SCO products and Project Monterey and IBM allegedly turning folks against SCO. Like they needed to turn anyone away from SCO. When a company shoots itself in the foot by suing its own customers right and left, it tends to create an atmosphere of alarm and distrust, resulting in others putting space between them and the foot-shooter.

IBM gets to respond next, and I expect them to say that SCO has zero claims left standing. And then we’ll get to IBM’s counterclaims, at last. Here’s a chart of all the summary judgment motions left hanging when SCO filed for bankruptcy protection.

Remember that some people from SCO moved to Microsoft, where they now pretend to be FOSS people. notably Sandeep Gupta. █

“[Microsoft's] Mr. Emerson and I discussed a variety of investment structures wherein Microsoft would ‘backstop,’ or guarantee in some way, BayStar’s investment…. Microsoft assured me that it would in some way guarantee BayStar’s investment in SCO.”

–Larry Goldfarb, BayStar, key investor in SCO

–Larry Goldfarb, BayStar, key investor in SCO

Summary: The SCO v. IBM case is reopened, despite a glaring lack of funds, resuming the FUD against Linux

Microsoft is now openly — not just covertly [1, 2] — supporting Apple’s fight against Android. “Microsoft disagrees that Judge Posner created a “categorical rule” or “blanket prohibition” on injunctive relief for infringement of SEPs,” says this post. “It calls the question of a RAND-encumbered patent owner’s entitlement to injunction relief “an interesting question — but not a question presented on appeal here.” Microsoft argues that RAND commitments must be considered as part of the eBay analysis, which it says Judge Posner precisely did here” (Posner is against software patents [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]).

Here we have Microsoft interfering with a competitor using a proxy or a litigation ally. It is typical Microsoft behaviour which goes back to the SCO case and prior to it, too. According to this [via], SCO’s case is still going on:

The Hon. David Nuffer has ruled on the SCO v. IBM motions, granting SCO’s motion for reconsideration and reopening the case, which IBM did not object to. Judge Nuffer apologizes to the parties for the error in his previous order refusing to reopen the case. Sounds like a mensch to me. I love it when judges don’t pretend something is the lawyers’ fault when it’s really the judge’s fault. He’s newly assigned to this case, and it’s been going on for over a decade, so he specifically tells the parties not to assume his familiarity, asking them to provide him with enough detail in the various briefs going forward to work with. And he has essentially accepted the IBM suggestions on how to go forward, which SCO did not want to happen. I was fairly confident he would, though, precisely because he’s new and he surely needs some time and help from the parties to get up to speed.

The pro-FOSS news site says: “After both parties have submitted their motions, the court will decide whether the case will be closed without further hearings with a summary judgement or if it will be re-opened in earnest.”

A Microsoft partner says “IBM’s lawsuit with SCO over just who owns Unix has crawled out of the grave and seems set to shuffle back into US courts.

“For the uninitiated, or those who’ve successfully tried to forget this turgid saga, a brief summary: SCO in 2003 sued IBM for doing something nasty to bits of Unix it owned. Or felt it owned. SCO also sued Novell, which it felt did not own some copyrights for Unix.

“Many private school educations later for the offspring of the lawyers involved SCO lost against Novell. By this time SCO was out of cash with which to keep up the fight against Big Blue, so the matter hibernated for a while.”

“Decade-old lawsuit exhumed in response to SCO motion for reconsideration,” writes Lee Hutchinson. Richard Adhikari writes the following summary in ECT:

The news that lawyers for The SCO Group have filed a new motion to reopen its case against IBM was greeted with incredulity, to put it mildly. Turns out that the bankrupt SCO really isn’t attempting to retry the case — there are some loose ends from the long and drawn-out proceedings that still need to be tied up. The motion did provide an excuse for traveling once more down memory lane, though.

What we have here is Microsoft-funded litigation. This one involved copyrights and Microsoft is currently trying patents, also using proxies to enhance impact (e.g. patent-stacking).

Thankfully there are some actions to curb patents in the US right now, even if some are misguided and badly-aimed [1, 2, 3]. Recently we got this ruling [1, 2] that “May Be A Boon For Biotech Startups” (no more patents on nature's basic genetics) and the text in Groklaw opens with:

I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in nature.

Watch the patents boosters react. Pamela Jones replies to this booster by saying: “He’s arguing CLS Bank was wrongly decided. Still. The law is quite specific that you can’t patent function in such a broad way it closes off all competition such that no one else can make a device that “scrolls intuitively”. But with software patents, that’s exactly what has been happening, and that isn’t even talking about the fact that software is mathematics and should not be patentable subject matter in the first place. But if it is going to be, the issue isn’t hardware or software; it’s specificity. If you want a patent, then, and it’s 100% software, be specific so you patent only the precise way you did what you did; that leaves room for others to do it a different way. And that is what President Obama said he’d like to retrain the USPTO examiners so they recognize the difference.”

In order to defend Linux we must watch out for patents on software and those who promote them. Microsoft is trying to sustain a SCO-like smear and scare, showing that the copyright plot against Linux is not completely dead yet (Microsoft has since then moved on to patents). █

Summary: Harassment by proxy seems like a possibility now that funds to the FSF are being discouraged

Donations to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) are a dangerous or suspicious activity now (like post-Cablegate Wikileaks), at least based on this account from a reader/contributor of ours. Donations to the FSF are made more difficult now. Microsoft did this type of thing last year [1, 2]. Here is how the latest story goes:

Master Card called me about my FSF Subscription That’s very strange because I’ve been making monthly payments for about a decade. Someone is doing something nasty to the FSF.

At 8AM, I got a call from the fraud prevention department of my credit card asking me to “verify some recent activity”. I saw it in my email when I woke up about an hour after they called.

My Mastercard was robbed once before, so I checked online and called the customer service number printed on my bill. There was nothing suspicious in the online report or the last bill. I was not about to call the number left on my answering machine, which simply identified itself as “TOLL FREE CALL” It took some time to escape the menu, which was uninformative and dangerous because it wanted to change things. The key phrase “human being” did the trick and I was promptly routed to an operator at the fraud department.

The representative told me that my monthly FSF subscription charge had triggered the call and that means hundreds of false charges had been made in the FSF’s name. When she told me the FSF charge was responsible for the call, I said that was strange because I had been making regular automated payments since 2004. She told me that the trigger was probably false charges to other accounts. I asked her how many false charges it would take to make such a trigger. She said that it changes daily but that it would probably take hundreds.

I can think of four explanations for this:

1. The FSF made a mistake in billing. Unlikely.

2. Mastercard wanted to harass the FSF. Unlikely but they have a history of cutting off funds to Wikileaks and can not really be trusted.

3. Someone made fraudulent payments to Mastercard on many accounts. That could be done maliciously or as a misguided help, the result would be the same and no one should do that.

4. Someone wanted to harass the FSF by setting up fake accounts to play games.

Whatever the actual reason, damage is being done to the FSF’s reputation and it should never have happened to me. An algorithm that overlooks my long history of monthly payments is broken. Operators should be given the exact reason that a company has been labeled suspicious. The call was inconvenient and damaging. Further speculation added to that damage. Hopefully, Mastercard itself is not responsible for this and will get to the bottom of it.

I started a FSF Forum thread about this hoping to call the right kind of attention to the problem.

http://www.fsf.org/associate/forum/community/612250276

Discouragement through discomfort is an effective strategy. Proving this to be intentional is hard, almost impossible even.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols celebrates a decade of fighting back against SCO, whose funding from Microsoft is evident. Showing the intention or proving it is the hard part. With uncertainty or lack of concrete evidence, these attacks can carry on, little by little, proxy by proxy (one of the latest seems to be Nokia). Groklaw covers another curious attack, namely Oracle (a friend of a friend, Apple). The latest is this: “Google has now responded to Oracle’s appeal in the Oracle v. Google API copyright case. Plus it adds its own cross appeal.”

Copyrights were also used by SCO. In all cases, and wherever FOSS takes over, the intend is to tax GNU/Linux or impose a sort of blockade. █

–Bruce Perens

Summary: SCO’s proxy battle is not over and more stories emerge which serve as reminders of proxy wars

According to SCO specialist/expert Groklaw, IBM has responded to this continued effort by SCO to revive litigation more than ten years after it started. It is being summarised as follows:”IBM has filed its response [PDF] to SCO’s motion asking for reconsideration of the Court’s order denying SCO’s motion to reopen the SCO v. IBM case. I have it as text for you.

“Is SCO selling a lie again?”“IBM tells Judge David Nuffer that it doesn’t oppose reopening the case at all — in fact it says it should happen. IBM has an proposed outline on how to proceed thereafter. Its plan differs from SCO’s.”

The Microsoft booster, in the mean time, took McBride’s claims at face value and wrote: “Darl McBride, the former chief executive officer of SCO, says he was offered $2 million by the Utah attorney general in May 2009 in exchange for taking down a website criticizing an area business person. Still pursuing the years-long legal battle against Novell and IBM over Unix and Linux intellectual property, SCO needed money at the time.”

“Microsoft mostly had the press on its side when it engaged in rackteering, spinning that as ‘licensing’, so the press was complicit.”Pamela Jones wrote in her site that “So many people sent me this url, I am posting the story. Otherwise I wasn’t going to. I don’t personally believe for a moment that this is the entire story. Darl has always been good at getting the media to print what *he* says is the story, invariably that he’s been wronged, but in time we get the rest of the story. For example, while he claimed for years that SCO owned the copyrights to Unix, it turned out to be untrue. So all the “wrongs” done were done to the media and court victims of SCO. So the real question is, why is he wanting the media to tell his side of the story now, after all this time? I note the article links to the Salt Lake Tribune, which says the FBI is investigating. That’s why I was going to wait until we have more information about all sides of the story before reaching any conclusions or even linking to the Darl McBride PR.”

And later, in the middle of the weekend, she added: “Here’s a question: on what basis would Darl McBride ask for $2 million to shut down a web site that the target alleged was defamatory? Or any web site? Allegedly the target owed $200,000 or so, although he denied it, so where does the $2 million figure come in? Why would he even agree to such a deal, if he did?”

“How likely is it that trolls like these wage war at the behest of someone else.”Is SCO selling a lie again? And if so, how about fact-checking? Are mere allegations guarantee of news coverage? Maybe it depends on who’s doing it. Microsoft mostly had the press on its side when it engaged in rackteering, spinning that as ‘licensing’, so the press was complicit.

It is worth mentioning that the company dismantled by Singer’s Mafia (Elliott Associates, the vulture fund) shows its effect in weaponising patents, having just seen patents (and copyright also) on load balancers being used for extortion. One report says: “Of 33 prospective jurors that were considered, five of them had patents of their own. (This trial was in the same court where a patent-owning jury foreman was likely instrumental to Apple’s blockbuster patent win over Samsung last summer.) No word yet on whether any terms of the settlement will be made public.”

This comes amid intervention by the same thugs who gave Novell’s patents to Apple and Microsoft (CPTN). Motorola came under fire from another vulture fund, Mr. Icahn, before it nearly gave its patents to Microsoft and Apple (Google needed to grossly overpay to outbid this duopoly of patent aggressors).

“Remember which company is scanning a lot of literature (it’s not Microsoft, which dropped these endeavours).”Here is an update from a case of patent trolls fighting Google/Motorola and another naming of patent trolls by the FRAND Blog that showed Apple and Microsoft ganging up against Android using FRAND/patent pools, whose purpose is to raise the cost of Android. The blog says: “Today brought the publication of what looks like is the first lawsuit of its kind — a complaint brought by a state attorney general (here, Vermont’s) against a non-practicing entity, alleging that the NPE’s patent assertion activities constitute unfair and deceptive trade practices under Vermont state law. (The suit was actually filed May 8, but it became publicly available today when the defendant was served.) The complaint was filed against MPHJ Technology Investments LLC, a company that has been characterized by some as the “scanner troll” — because it has sent demand letters to thousands of businesses that use scan-to-email technology.”

How likely is it that trolls like these wage war at the behest of someone else. Remember which company is scanning a lot of literature (it’s not Microsoft, which dropped these endeavours). █

Summary: A recollection of very dirty tactics from Microsoft, which uses money to oppress, overthrow, and even hijack its opposition

Paul E. Singer (aka “Elliott“, a misnomer for a bunch predatory investors) can be accused of letting Microsoft grab Novell’s patent portfolio through CPTN. More recently we saw this vulture preying on another company and now we see it destroying BMC for personal gain. The Microsoft booster (only occasional) at the Financial Times says: ‘The deal marks a success for Elliott Management, the activist investor that accumulated 9.6 per cent of BMC shares and won two seats on the company’s board.”

That’s entryism. Pamela Jones wrote about it that “Elliott Management forced the Novell deal too. Since Microsoft was involved in all that, what is the real purpose of all this?”

Novell is no longer a focus of ours. We mostly ignore articles about SUSE, taking a passive approach. But Novell’s patents and the tactics of entryism cannot be ignored. Microsoft is now doing to Nokia what it did to Novell and at the end of the day we are left dealing with just another SCO. Here is some more coverage about Novell and SCO, courtesy of Jones:

• SCO: But waitaminnit, yer Honor

• The Novell v. Microsoft Hearing at the 10th Circuit – Eyewitness Report ~pj

  Our own Justin Ellis attended today’s hearing at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Novell’s appeal in Novell v. Microsoft. This is the antitrust litigation Novell brought over WordPerfect. He has a report for us. He begins with his general impressions, and then provides his notes on the arguments.

What we have learned from those two cases is that Microsoft can turn opponents (like Nokia) into allies using entryism, essentially an infiltration and/or bribe. Microsoft funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars for Novell to change teams after Novell had become a fierce antitrust opponent of Microsoft and Microsoft paid tens of millions of dollars to SCO when it attacked Linux with empty copyright claims. More recently Microsoft also bribed Barnes & Noble to defect from legal action against Microsoft to a Microsoft alliance or even a sale to Microsoft (see [1, 2, 3] for background). Not too long ago Barnes & Noble complained about the patent system and shortly thereafter Microsoft tried to abduct and silence the company for good. Regarding the news that “Microsoft Mulling Nook Media LLC Purchase For $1 Billion” Pamela Jones wrote: “And so Microsoft kills off another Linux-based offering in the market, just as its deal with Nokia killed off another. Anti-trust regulators, are you noticing the subtle strategy?” Regarding the news that Microsoft claims to be making billions from Android ‘licensing’ (extortion), Pamela Jones wrote: “To regulators: please notice that it is Microsoft and Apple who are claiming that Motorola is asking for unconscionable amounts of money. But Microsoft is making much, much more per device. Remember that they claim if they had to pay Motorola less than this per device, somewhere between $3.50 and $4.00 per unit, they couldn’t stay in business. So, the question before you has to be, is Microsoft using patents to destroy its chief competition? And NO ONE has tested these patents to determine if they are even valid. It’s all done by bullying. Barnes & Noble revealed that the patents shown to them by Microsoft were junk, that they didn’t want them, use them or need them. Please look into this. Thank you.”

What Microsoft does is almost certainly illegal, but since it takes a lot of lawyers and lobbyists to enforce the law against criminal corporations, it is unlikely that anything other than a large corporations can successful press charges against Microsoft executives, leading to a jail term (e.g. for racketeering, bribery, and so on). We see this quite frequently in the energy and banking sectors. The law is not being practised (or practised only in one direction), hence it’s just relish. █

Summary: Red Hat is too soft on the issue of software patents, based on its comments to the USPTO; Linux/Android continue to suffer from software patents in court cases which may last years

Red Hat has hardly been a flag bearer in the fight against software patents. It is not as bad as IBM, but it is not always helpful, either. Red Hat itself is filing to receive software patents of its own, making a distinction between what it calls “bad” software patents and “good” software patents. It tends to focus on trolls and in its Web site OpenSource.com (Red Hat-run) it has almost a monopoly on views regarding software patents.

Nevertheless, in the wake of USPTO opening up to feedback Red Hat is making its policy known:

The USPTO has been asking the public to respond to a series of questions with suggestions on improving patents. It is aware that the technical community isn’t happy with the way patents are being issued, particularly software patents. You are familiar with some of the USPTO’s questions, because we at Groklaw responded to two of them, topic 1 on how to improve software patents, regarding functional language, and topic 2, suggestions for future topics for discussion.

Red Hat’s suggestions play along the lines of software patents as a given, which is problematic. Groklaw‘s ‘cref 66895 suggestions], on the other hand, were very good and they are essential for a meaningful discussion of the real issues. Elsewhere in Groklaw there is a discussion about a legal case involving the best-selling Linux devices, the ones from Samsung. Here are the latest two updates on that:

1. Joint Case Management Statement Filed in Apple v. Samsung

The judge in the first Apple v. Samsung patent case in California, the Hon. Lucy Koh, asked the parties to file a joint case management statement, just in case she decides to go forward with an immediate second jury on the issue of damages on the 14 products where the first jury got the math wrong. And they have now done so [PDF]. There will be a hearing on all this on April 29. Of course, they disagree. Because they don’t agree on how to go forward, they each set out their positions, once again. The short version is that Apple wants to hurry up and have the trial immediately and Samsung wants to hear from the appeals court before the new damages trial goes forward, so as to ensure the same mistakes aren’t repeated.

2. Judge Koh’s Order in Apple v Samsung: No Stay on Damages Retrial, Unless…

Judge Lucy Koh has reached a decision [PDF] on going forward on the retrial on damages in Apple v. Samsung. Trial is set now for November 12th, on damages only, same Daubert rulings, motions in limine, discovery disputes, and evidentiary objections ruled on the same as the first trial, meaning if she made mistakes in the first trial, they’ll be repeated in the retrial. “The parties may not relitigate these issues,” she writes. So it’s all for the appeal court to figure out. She isn’t interested in reviewing all that. So if the appeals court orders a third trial, that’s the way it will have to be. She wants to keep the damages retrial short and sweet and limited to just one issue, and then send it on its way to appeal, so no new theories and no new fact discovery. There is a schedule for expert discovery. The jury will be 8 people, with the parties’ given three peremptory challenges each. Apple asked for the very same jury instructions, but she says they will get together on October 17th to discuss “how to
present infringement and validity findings” to the new jury. Other than that, she is silent on that point.

Trial expected at the end of this year, eh? Justice is taking too long, so it’s SCO all over again in that respect. What needs to occur some time in the next year or two is elimination of software parents in the United States (or radical cut-down). Red Hat just doesn’t go far enough to achieve that. We need other fronts in the fight against software patents; Google ain’t it, either. █

Summary: Groklaw provides another timely glimpse at the state of SCO

TECHRIGHTS hardly touches Novell and SCO because both companies are dead or defunct. Litigation carries on as a spectator sport (Microsoft is involved in antitrust) and there are lesser known cases against Novell and SCO. As Groklaw put it: “Do you remember Wayne Gray, the guy in Florida who tried to to get the trademark INUX, was challenged by X/Open, the owner of the UNIX trademark, and then ended up suing Novell, X/Open and SCO, claiming a conspiracy and adding RICO claims? X/Open won on summary judgment a couple of years ago, he appealed, lost there too, and now the final chapter in this incredible saga is that Gray must pay X/Open’s attorneys’ fees in the amount of $404,820 plus interest of 6% from June 28, 2010 to September 30, 2011 and an interest rate of 4.75% from October 1, 2011 to the present, and $5,016.82 to cover their costs in dealing with him.”

According to another post about UNIX and SCO, SCO is bankrupt and “is now officially transferred from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. Here’s the order [PDF]. The Chapter 11 trustee, Edward Cahn, was to turn over all the records and assets to the interim Chapter 7 trustee as soon as the US Trustee appoints him or her, and file with the court within 14 days a list of all unpaid debts incurred after the Chapter 11 bankruptcy began and within 30 days a final report. Of course, as he requested, he is now appointed [PDF] as the Chapter 7 interim trustee. He just changes hats.”

Here is the balance: “SCO lists $82,431 in cash on hand on the conversion date. That means some of you reading this now have more money than SCO.”

A lot has changed since this site was born. Many companies we opposed no longer exist or are no longer influential. This is indicative of success, but it also suggests that our goals should evolve. A large barrier now is an issue rather than several companies; it is software patents, which some of those companies use. The remainder of today’s posts will be about patents. █

Summary: SCO has no money to pay back its loans

THE SCO case is said to be coming to its very end as monetary issues are being settled. “Blank Rome is owed some money for representing SCO Chapter 11 trustee, Edward Cahn, and it would like to be paid,” notes Pamela Jones, “now that SCO has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy instead. I know. It’s not called SCO any more. So, TSG, then, but it will always be “SCO” to me. Mr. Cahn has asked to be the trustee in Chapter 7, but that hasn’t been decided yet, and so meanwhile, here come the bills, going back to December of 2011 and ending July 31, 2012.

“If you recall, Cahn represented to the court that SCO now has only $145,352.00 in hand left. If you add up the new interim bills and expenses from Blank Rome, calculated at 80% of the actual bills and 100% of the costs which is how interim bills get paid, it comes to $34,601.78. And so the sand is running out of the hourglass, grain by grain, and this story is not yet at the very end. So even though I don’t usually predict outcomes, I think it’s safe to say that at this rate, barring the unlikely, Ralph Yarro and friends aren’t going to get their $2 million loan repaid by SCO. Ever. Only in their dreams.”

We wrote about Yarro’s money in [1, 2]. █

“Microsoft hardly needs an SCO source license. Its license payment to SCO is simply a good-looking way to pass along a bribe…”

–Bruce Perens

Summary: Reports on the end of SCO

THE history of SCO has been that of a dying company since Techrights started coverage on the subject. SCO taught us about Microsoft’s fights against Linux by proxy, among other things (more on that later today).

SJVN claims that SCO is really dead now. As he puts it in his blog: “SCO has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its maker. It’s joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-company. With apologies to Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch, SCO, the company behind a series of foolish anti-Linux lawsuits, is finally really and truly dead.

“SCO, which has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy since the fall of 2007, has now gone into Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The difference is that in chapter 11 there is some plan, albeit not very rational in SCO’s case, that the company can eventually return to normal business. In Chapter 7, all that’s left is to close and padlock the doors and then sell the furniture.”

Sean also suspects that this is the very end of SCO. He writes: “Two years ago, I wrote that SCO was (mostly) dead. Back in 2010, Novell won the critical ruling against SCO (once famously referred to as the ‘Smoking Crack Organization’ by Linus Torvalds), asserting the Novell and not SCO own the trademarks to Unix.

“At the time Groklaw declared: Stewart Rules: Novell Wins! CASE CLOSED!

“Fast forward two years, SCO is still kinda/sorta around, but not for much longer. Groklaw (love PJ!) has reported that SCO has now filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. A Chapter 7 bankruptcy is essentially a liquidation bankruptcy as opposed to Chapter 11 which is a reorganization effort.”

Brian Proffitt speaks as though SCO is already just history and recalls what it all meant for the present. “Looking back,” he writes, “it was one hell of a gamble by SCO. As a strategy, it was admittedly not a bad idea (in a soulless corporate sort of way): claim copyright infringement of their Unix code within Linux and start setting up licensing agreements with anyone and everyone running Linux on their servers.”

Wired says that SCO “filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, a step beyond the more common Chapter 11 bankruptcy status. It’s not the end of the road for the much-hated company, but it’s close.

Christine Hall says that “SCO Never Can Say Goodbye” and to quote part of her analysis: “I’d almost forgotten that SCO was still around until PJ at Groklaw reported the company was in the process of switching from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7. In bankruptcy talk that means the company’s stance has changed from we’re-going-to-come-out-of-this-alive to it’s-call-the-priest-for-last-rites-time. The trouble is, this is SCO, so you know it’s not going to be that simple. They’ll come up with some stupid request for the court that confounds logic, which they’ve done.”

Groklaw remains the source by which most bloggers seem to be evaluating SCO’s case. Hopefully, just hopefully, SCO can be left behind already. Attacks on Linux now take a different form that mostly relies on patents. █

“On the same day that CA blasted SCO, Open Source evangelist Eric Raymond revealed a leaked email from SCO’s strategic consultant Mike Anderer to their management. The email details how, surprise surprise, Microsoft has arranged virtually all of SCO’s financing, hiding behind intermediaries like Baystar Capital.”

–Bruce Perens

Summary: CPTN and SCO continue to openwash themselves while evidence piles up to show that they dislike FOSS

THE US-centric ITC deals a blow to Motorola, which fought back and recently used its patents to knock down Apple's litigation. Motorola is clearly the one company with the most vested interest in defending Android from litigation, owing to Google ownership.

Apple In the mean time is trying to ban yet more Android devices and as put by Sam Tuke (FSFE), “US patent protectionism is on a course for splendid isolation from international markets. Steady profits will continue to flow east regardless.”

Here is a fine example of how patents harm the public very directly; this link, “Samsung Galaxy Nexus banned in US”, was sent to me even by a friend who is not into technology (he is an avid Galaxy user and so is his girlfriend). The public is generally affected everywhere it is located and the news made it into the corporate press, too. “The story is also on slashdot,” wrote a reader of ours. “Here is comment from slashdot,” he added:

I work for Google and I’ve seen how my colleagues have consistently worked long hours to innovate and create new features. The Galaxy Nexus is an amazing phone. It’s thin, and light, and doesn’t even have any hardware buttons on the front at all – yet Apple still are not happy. If you can’t see why you’re blind.

Apples goal is not to get competitors to “design around” their patents. This has happened several times already, the Samsung Galaxy 3 has even been called out by tech review sites for having a “lawyer approved design” (it’s not rectangular, it does not have slide to unlock, etc). Apple keep coming, with newer and even more stupid patents, because their goal is not individuality, it is the utter destruction of all competitors. Steve Jobs himself said that in words so clear nobody can re-interpret them.

What’s more, it’s very hard to make an Android phone that doesn’t share design elements with the iPhone these days, because Apple has copied Android many times in the past few years, for example, its notifications tray is identical to the design that first shipped in Android 1.0, and inferior to the one shipping in Jellybean. Android 1.0 also shipped with a universal search box and pluggable API for it, it shipped with suspend

CNET covered the story and noteworthy is the following part:

Apple has posted the $2.6m bond requested by the courts when they won an injunction against Samsung to halt Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales in the US. What does this mean? It means the injunction has now officially started, and if Samsung doesn’t immediately sales, they could be sanctioned for contempt.

Android has had CPTN members (Novell’s patents in the hands of Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft) go after it, but as we showed here before, they also use proxies like Nokia and MOSAID to fuel up the litigation frenzy. Red Hat apparently paid MOSAID, so just like SCO after it was openly paid by Microsoft, MOSAID can now go and assault other parties with identical claims, unless Red Hat signed a GPL-compatible deal (they won’t tell, which is a bad sign). In a post titled “Solaris, SCO, Linux, Open Source and Red Hat Summit” it gets pointed out that Oracle and SCO are still getting a seat in FOSS conferences, despite their bad behaviour:

Apparently it is still a (small) concern. I did the best I could to explain that SCO is now a zombie (they still exist, but does anyone take them seriously?) and of course every major enteprise Linux vendor provide indemnification. But still, simple truth is it was a concern and a question that led to some conversation.

Sometimes Microsoft buys such a seat too, despite attacking FOSS. They wish to remove the sting from FOSS by attacking it while pretending to be an ally. It is quite priceless when Apple fans point to Apple’s “open source” PR-esque page. █

Summary: Patent news of interest, collected over the course of recent days

TAXER of Linux file systems, Tuxera, is boasting new vectors of Microsoft tax and two Microsoft allies, Yahoo and Facebook, argue over software patents: [via]

“After years of positive relations, friendly blog posts, and referral traffic, Yahoo may have just been biding its time waiting to declare war on Facebook,” says one blogger.

Groklaw writes an article about the EveryMD case against Facebook. Watch the angle which mentioned Mono:

You know how those pushing the alleged “safety” of Mono back in the day, despite it being patent-encumbered, used to try to minimize the danger by arguing that Microsoft would never sue end users over patent infringement, because there’d be no meaningful financial return? The argument went that Mono was safe, because no rational actor would sue individuals, only deep pockets.

Guess what? Someone has just sued some end users over alleged patent infringement.

Courthouse News had the news first that EveryMD has filed a lawsuit [PDF] alleging patent infringement against Facebook end users, specifically Facebook users who have business accounts, naming Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich as defendants, after Facebook refused to pay a royalty for EveryMD’s patents. The complaint also names as defendants “Does 1-1000″, which it defines as “each a presently unidentified one of an estimated 4,000,000 additional Facebook business account holders that are subject to the jurisdiction of this court.”

Shades of SCO Group, who sued business end users of Linux, like DaimlerChrysler and AutoZone, for alleged copyright infringement after IBM refused to pay them off. They were asking $699 for anyone using a server in the enterprise that ran Linux. EveryMD is asking business accounts on Facebook to pay $500, their “reduced” price. If the group is large enough, $500 each comes to the same as one lump sum from a deep pockets company, I guess is the rationale.

Let’s not forget that Microsoft contributed funds to SCO when it was fighting against Linux. Microsoft is a troll by proxy, always using other companies to do its battles. And right now, as TechDirt puts it, “Patent Aggressor Microsoft Files EU Complaint Against Google/Motorola For Charging Too Much To License Patents”. To quote:

It’s difficult not to look cynically at Microsoft’s latest move to file an antitrust complaint in the EU over Motorola’s patent royalty rates, and think about just how obnoxiously hypocritical Microsoft is being as a company on this particular issue. First off, Microsoft has become a pretty significant patent aggressor over the past few years, filing lawsuits and pressuring companies to pay up. It’s also been a huge fan of patent FUD — especially against open source competitors. Most people assume that Microsoft was the main player behind SCO’s quixotic (but costly and distracting) legal battle against Linux. Then, of course, every so often Microsoft officials insist that Linux infringes on a bunch of its patents, but it never wants to make clear which ones. More recently, of course, Microsoft has been demanding license fees for its patents from a variety of companies making use of Android — to the point that some have argued Microsoft makes more off each Android installation than each Microsoft Phone installation.

Microsoft pretends to be a victim, as we noted the other day. TechDirt adds: “Of course, Microsoft’s almost gleeful blog post about its complaint ignores all of this reality and history, and tries to position it as if Motorola and Google are trying to “kill” web and mobile video by charging too high a royalty rate. Frankly, for anyone who knows anything about Microsoft’s patent practices over the past few years, they’ll see through this and recognize how laughable Microsoft’s claims are.” Microsoft is said to have filed other complaints against Google, but it denies it. Microsoft usually hires proxies to file complaints against Google. In some cases, the agencies are exactly the same, as we witnessed before.

Groklaw has meanwhile provided updates on the Oracle vs. Google case [1, 2]. We believe this case to be a favour from Larry Ellison to his best friend, Steve Jobs. We have already explained and have shown shy. █

Summary: A few items of news about Novell/SUSE and SCO

THE OPENSUSE project is very weak at this point; in fact, it’s so weak that Linux news hardly covers it anymore. Many of of its key people left.

There are those who make OpenSUSE spins, but these are one-man efforts such as this one. To quote:

In case any of you like another spin with other desktops, I ll be happy to make them. If you visit the susestudio site, you ‘ll notice its not that difficult to make a spin, all you need is some basic knowledge of the Linux programs and libraries, and which ones to choose to make a good system, not a bloated one.

We made Bloatnux with this tool. It’s not hard.

The community manager of OpenSUSE announces a new program in his blog:

This is something I’ve wanted to do since the day I became community manager for openSUSE. I’ve always believed that the budget I had in SUSE should be used for the openSUSE community. Initially, that meant that I moved money from the sponsoring of conferences to supporting openSUSE people going to conferences as well as providing them with goodies like DVD’s, openSUSE beer, flyers and t-shirts.

Basically, SUSE promotion as “gifts”; it’s almost like a bribe.

We are not sure if it’s still worth covering Novell in this site because Novell is pretty much history just like SCO. Groklaw still tries getting back to its SCO days:

SCO and IBM have reached a stipulation [PDF] on how to go forward on reactivating the Utah litigation, and SCO has filed it in Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. Assuming it’s signed by the judge, the Hon. Kevin Gross, in time for the April 23rd hearing now scheduled in Utah District Court in Salt Lake City before the Hon. Dee Benson on SCO’s laughable motion to let only *it* go ahead and IBM not, I’d say it’s game on. They’ve agreed IBM can proceed with its defenses and counterclaims. It was IBM that suggested in its opposition to SCO’s motion that the best way forward was to ask the Bankruptcy Court to lift the stay on *both* parties, which is what the stipulation agrees to.

It was almost 5 years ago that SCO filed for bankruptcy protection and about a year since Novell was sold. Should we keep on top of all that? What about SUSE? █

Summary: Bad signs appear as Attachmate puts SUSE aside but continues to ‘hoard’ UNIX rights, dissociating one’s importance to the other

ATTACHMATE has been ensuring that it can maintain its status as a proprietary software company. Executives who were committed to a different agenda were mostly removed, expelled, or simply left. Mono developers were fired without exception and SUSE was relocated and relegated to Germany, where developers are now dependent on funding from Microsoft. What is actually left in Attachmate which is “open source”? Even Vibe was axed as we had predicted all along; it was in part based on Free software from Google (Wave).

Attachmate, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, is putting new people in charge and the Deccan Herald (insisting on just Internet Explorer or Netscape even in 2011) speaks about the spinoff called SUSE, which is basically partly funded by Microsoft now (to help put Microsoft tax on GNU/Linux servers). Attachmate is also the ‘owner’ of early UNIX copyrights, according to this latest report which adds:

“Novell’s board of directors adopted a resolution approving the sale, which specifically mentioned the copyrights were to be retained by Novell,” the judges said in the opinion.

This was the second time the appeals court ruled on this case. In the first appeal it reversed a lower-court ruling in Novell’s favor and sent the case back. After a two-week trial, the jury ruled Novell owned the copyrights. SCO appealed.

A spokeswoman for Linden, Utah-based SCO, Chantell Ferrin, didn’t immediately reply to messages seeking comment.

There is also a derailed analysis behind an apparent paywall at Lexology. We are still not sure what Attachmate will do with these copyrights. It is not as though the company has any commitment to Free software or to UNIX. Given the amount of time and money Novell has invested in this case, it is rather unlikely that UNIX will just be left there to rot and bring no revenue to Attachmate, even if through a sale. Unlike Novell, Attachmate has no need to keep up appearance and keep UNIX away from enemies of Linux. Will these be sold to IBM maybe? Or perhaps to some foe of Red Hat? This is a question that has generally bothered us since 2007 and we wrote about it many times before. We must pay attention to Attachmate’s actions and statements. █