Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Intellectual Property Law Blogs -> Groklaw

Intellectual Property Law

: Groklaw

Red Hat and Novell Beat IP Innovation and in Marshall, Texas, too

By Pamela Jones et al.

Do you remember the patent infringement case IP Innovation filed against Red Hat and Novell in 2007? We looked for prior art, if you recall.

Well, I'm very happy to tell you that Red Hat and Novell have prevailed in the litigation:

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, announced that today a jury in federal court in Marshall, Texas, returned a verdict in favor of Red Hat, Inc. and Novell, Inc. in a case alleging patent infringement brought by IP Innovation LLC, a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation and Technology Licensing Corporation.

The patents at issue were found to be invalid and worthless.

"This is the result we expected and we are gratified that the jury recognized the tremendous innovative value of open source software. The jury knocked out three invalid patents that were masquerading as a new and important inventions, when they were not," said Michael Cunningham, Executive Vice President at Red Hat. "We appreciate the jury's wisdom and remain committed to providing value to our customers, including through our Open Source Assurance program. We also remain stalwart in resisting bogus shakedown tactics."

Full post as published by Groklaw on April 30, 2010 (boomark / email).