Red Hat Settles Patent Issue Involving Firestar Software and DataTern

[Metropolitanjury]

Red Hat (News - Alert), a provider of open source solutions, has announced the settlement of patent litigation brought against it by Firestar Software and DataTern.

Calling this settlement an “important precedent” in the breadth of protection for the open source community, Raleigh-based Red Hat said the settlement will protect Red Hat's customers and the open source community from similar suits.

In 2006, Firestar had sued Red Hat claiming patent infringement. Later, DataTern reportedly claimed that one of Red Hat's business-software products, a database program known as JBoss Hibernate, violated the patents.

The settlement covers 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.

“Typically when a company settles a patent lawsuit, it focuses on getting safety for itself,” said Rob Tiller, vice president and assistant general counsel, IP for Red Hat. “But that was not enough for us; we wanted broad provisions that covered our customers, who place trust in us, and the open source community, whose considerable efforts benefit our business.”

Paul Frields, a project leader of Fedora, noted that through the coverage of both upstream and downstream developers and distributors in the settlement, the Fedora community, and others, are given protection that builds on the assurances that Red Hat already offers.

Red Hat has consistently maintained that software patents impede innovation in the software industry and conflict with open source development and distribution.
Company believes that open source requires transparency that allows members of the community to use, modify, and share software with one another without constraint.

However, company is still entangled in a third patent complaint filed by IP Innovation LLC and Technology Licensing Corporation last year. The lawsuit reportedly accuses Red Hat and Novell (News - Alert) of infringing three patents, all of which appear to have originally been assigned to Xerox.

By Ms.Bobby Aanand, Metropolitan Jury.