Bonum Certa Men Certa

Linux/Android Still Faces Proxy Challenge

"...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



Summary: MOSAID and Oracle as seen in the context of Android; more new rants about the USPTO, which loses support from the US public

OUR resource page about MOSAID is being expanded as it becomes increasingly evident that Microsoft uses it as a proxy.



Groklaw has been following this patent troll since it took on Red Hat and according to this update, MOSAID's case becomes ever more bizarre:

If you were a patent holder contemplating suing a bunch of companies for patent infringement, what's the first thing you would want to know? Do you think maybe it would be that you actually own the patent(s) you are asserting. That thought obviously never crossed MOSAID's mind when it brought suit back in August against Red Hat, IBM and others. (See Mosaid v. Red Hat - A new patent infringement complaint aimed at Linux).

And if that weren't bad enough, your attorneys then demonstrate they have no clue that the America Invents Act (patent reform act) was signed into law on September 16, 2011, or that pleading patent infringement requires something more than saying I own a patent and you infringe it. These guys can't get anything right.

Of course, what makes it all the worse is that MOSAID Technologies is that patent troll that has now climbed into bed with Microsoft and Nokia to try and cause more havoc with Android. There are a number of things I love about Canada - MOSAID is not one of them.

Let's recap the history of this litigation. MOSAID brought its original complaint (PDF; Text] for patent infringement on August 9, 2011, against Red Hat, IBM, Alcatel-Lucent, Adobe, Juniper, VMWare, and NetApp. That original complaint asserted two U.S. patents: 6,505,241 ('241), allegedly infringed by Adobe, Alcatel, IBM, Juniper, and NetApp; and 5,892,914 ('914), allegedly infringed by Red Hat. Interestingly, although VMware is identified as a defendant in the heading and as a party to the suit, the complaint contains no specific allegation that VMware infringed either of the patents, despite the fact that VMware's vFabric GemFire Platform is identified as an infringing product. Screw-up number one.

On September 16, 2011, President Obama signs the America Invents Act into law. More on that in a bit.

On September 27, 2011, purported defendants IBM, Juniper, Adobe, Alcatel-Lucent, NetApp, and VMware wrote to MOSAID informing MOSAID of its second big mistake - MOSAID didn't own the '241 patent. Oops!

After receiving the Complaint, defendants discovered that MOSAID could not assert the ‘241 patent because more than three years earlier—on June 30, 2008—MOSAID’s predecessor-in-interest, Network Caching Technology, LLC, had dedicated the entire patent to the public pursuant to 35 U.S.C. €§ 253.

Screw up number two!


For those who are new to it, MOSAID tried to get Nokia patents (with Microsoft's help) through some dodgy route in a tiny European country. B&N complained about it. It saw what was happening there and the obvious target is Android/Linux.

The patent system is a big sham and the hype we see about patents in the news ought to stop because it kills the real, i.e. producing, industry. Ed Lazowska, writing for Xconomy, is one of the latest to complain about the patent system. He writes:

Just about everything about the system is broken. In my view it is working strongly against real innovation. Major companies amass enormous portfolios of questionable patents that they can use to bludgeon one another (until they sign cross-licensing agreements, at which point only the little guys are left to be bludgeoned). Organizations that are not in the innovation business acquire portfolios that they assert for profit alone. I have absolutely nothing against the licensing of substantive innovations by those in the innovation business, whether by major companies or little guys . But much of what goes on today does not fall into this category, and something needs to change. I am not sufficiently expert to make appropriate detailed proposals, but I am sufficiently expert to smell a rat.


Yes, this man is getting it. Then there are rats like Tuxera, which acts more like a Microsoft proxy (we are still working on it by speaking to XFS copyright holders). There is this new press release about this rat which helps Microsoft put a patent tax on Android and Linux. To quote:

Marvell and Tuxera's joint solution is designed to reduce overall development cost and enable faster time to market for customers' NAS platforms..


Only if your aim is to make Microsoft the standard (Microsoft's file systems). This is one of the ways Microsoft currently extorts backers of Android, according to what we learned from the OIN (ActiveSync is another vector, but it's under NDAs). Then there is Oracle's attack on Android, the latest on which is summarised as follows:

A judge's ruling on the Android Java patent battle between Google and Oracle has given both battling companies some wins and some losses. A potentially embarrassing email by a Google engineer has been allowed in as evidence. On the other hand, Oracle has been limited in its ability to introduce other evidence for its claim that Google has infringed on its Java language patents.


We still believe that the lawsuit may have been motivated by Steve Jobs, who is Larry Ellison's best friend. Apple will hopefully get spanked in the courtroom for patent violations, to the point where Apple will need to rethink its stance on patents. One of the major lawsuits against Apple is from the dying Kodak, which turned into a patent aggressor in light of its failures:

The 132-year-old photography icon has been pummeled by consumers' switch to digital. Its fortunes deteriorated further last year, and it said in November that it could run out of cash in a year if it couldn't sell a trove of 1,100 digital-imaging patents.


Given that Kodak keeps suing Apple, we hope that Kodak keeps those out of the hands of trolls and keeps giving Apple reasons to reconsider its patent strategy.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft XBox is Dying as More Retailers Stop Stocking It and Massive Layoffs Planned Again
Microsoft is circling down the drain
Linux and the Freedom Paradox
Linux is losing freedom if some external actors who only use Microsoft tools for development wrest control
Watch the FSF Party Live (via Livestream)
It's in WebM format, which is widely supported by now
Advocacy of Software Freedom Changed, LUGs Became Less Relevant
The way we see it, support groups like LUGs sort of outlived their usefulness when it became easier to install GNU/Linux
 
Links 05/10/2025: Slow News Day and Wondering About the Canada Post Walkout
Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/10/2025: Telnet Debugging and The Programmer’s Brain
Links for the day
More Than "Just a Rumour": XBox Seems to Have Just Died
At this point, why would any studio out there target or partner with XBox?
How to Tell Your Community, Project or Company is Being Infiltrated by Saboteurs
How to identify nefarious social engineering
The Fortieth Birthday of the FSF Made Us Extremely Happy
It feels like the 'hacker community' is regrouping to discuss things and prepare for the next Big Challenge
Chat Control 2 Them, Not 2 U
Follow the advice of Dr. Patrick Breyer
Mozilla: Throw Away Your "Old" PC and Enable "Digital Rights Management (DRM)"
This is heading in a bad direction
Controlling Our Computing for Another Forty Years
40 years of freedom
Motivational Small Place to Run Large Sites
We deem this scenery motivational and inspiring
Techrights' Text Version (Daily Bulletin) Turns Five This Month
our plain-text bulletins are turning 5 this month
We'll Continue Covering the Moribund OSI and Other Dysfunctional if Not Hostile Institutions
Stefano Maffulli's departure is due to his defection and due to him failing the mission in pursuit of money (his salary)
Links 05/10/2025: Lufthansa Layoffs (4,000) and More Spotify Woes (Aside From Massive Debt)
Links for the day
The Free Software Foundation's Livestream Has Ended, Video/s Might be Online Next
I've asked whether they'll upload video of some of the event; I still wait for an answer
The Register MS Does Not Know the Difference Between Microsoft GitHub and GitLab
At the time of writing (October 5) the article from "Thu 2 Oct 2025" remains uncorrected
"Bullshit Generators" (What RMS Calls LLMs) and Fake Images Already Target the FSF
Why does Google News promote fake articles about the FSF while omitting all the real ones?
Software Patents as a Bubble
Don't invest resources in hype; if you detect a bubble, run away from it
Links 05/10/2025: Political Leftovers, Climate Change, and Security Incidents
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 04, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 04, 2025
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
When Microsoft "Integrates" Something With "AI" It Means It's Losing Money and Is Generally Hopeless
how did Bing fare after 36 months of LLM slop being hyped up as "replacement" for search?
Most Certificates Don't Improve Security, They Mostly Increase Downtime (for No Good Reason)
The 'Gemini sites' (capsules) are a growing force
The statCounter Site Has Data Integrity Problems
Maybe we'll get back to statCounter when its data becomes more "stable" again
10 Ways to Combat Software Patents
software patents are loathed also by proprietary software developers
"Just a Little Bit of Meat..."
Free software "absolutism" is not a radical stance, more so if the only "radical" belief the user possesses is that he or she must be in control of his or her software, and by extension his or her computer
Compromised by NVIDIA Proprietary Library
Meanwhile in Boston there are "[r]oundtable talk with FSF volunteers (both in-person and online)"
Red Hat is Ignoring the Free Software Community, It's a "Fortune 1000" Vendor
Red Hat's blog also participates a lot in promoting of Wall Street's latest pump-and-dump "AI" scheme
Free Software Foundation Party Has Begun
We shall be focusing a lot on software patents today
Former Head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lina Khan Knows Whatever Microsoft Touches Will Die
Just like Skype (as recently as months ago) [...] When Microsoft grabs things, or when it buys things, it almost never ends well
Slopwatch: Fake Articles About LibreOffice in Austria and Wine 10.16
very short
Links 04/10/2025: "attempted Coup" Noted in Facebook, Russia Kills Journalists via Drones
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Anesthesia and Baudpunk
Links for the day
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day