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Red Hat Settles Patent Violation Lawsuit

Red Hat issued a statement this morning that is has settled a patent litigation lawsuit with Firestar Software and DataTern, saying it protects Red Hat's current customers and sets a precedent for the open source community at large.

Firestar initiated a lawsuit againt Red Hat in 2006 over its newly acquired JBoss technology, claiming patent violations relating to Hibernate 3, a high performance object/relational persistence and query service. Firestar claimed it submitted prior art in September, 1997. DataTern subsequently filed a suit earlier this year with similar allegations. Red Hat has strenuously denied all of the allegations.

In a prepared statement released today, Red Hat says it has put both issues to rest while "[protecting] Red Hat's customers and the open source community from similar suits."

Though specific details of the settlement are not available, it apparently covers "all software distributed under Red Hat's brands, as well as upstream predecessor versions. The settlement also protects derivative works of, or combination products using, the covered products from any patent claim based in any respect on the covered products."

Richard Fontana, Open Source Licensing and Patent Counsel at Red Hat, says, "“Red Hat’s settlement satisfies the most stringent patent provisions in open source licenses, is consistent with the letter and spirit of all versions of the GPL and provides patent safety for developers, distributors and users of open source software.”

• Red Hat
• patents
• firestar
• datatern

by Lorra on Jul. 17, 2008

Hi ,

Thanks for sharing the latest happening on the Lawsuit by Red Hat , for patent violation . Thanks.

With best wishes ,

Lorra .

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