Thursday, 12. June 2008
Red Hat Heave a Sigh of Relief
Red Hat, this week, announced that it has settled patent infringement claims against it from two companies related to a method of interfacing with a database.
The lawsuit, filed two years ago in a U.S. District Court in Texas, centered on Firestar's patent for linking object-oriented software application with a relational database to facilitate access to it. Firestar specifically had alleged that JBoss, which Red Hat had acquired, violated its patent with the JBoss Hibernate 3.0 object-relational mapping tool for Java. Hibernate 3.0 had an open license. The rights to that patent were later handed over by Firestar to Datatern, which then continued the suit against Red Hat.
That fight never made it to the courtroom, as the two sides have reached a settlement now. "Like most settlements, this one ends the specific lawsuit between the parties, but it does much more than that," Red Hat said in the statement.
The settlement nullifies the suit between the companies, but also assures that Red Hat's developer community and customers are protected against future patent suits from DataTern and its parent company, Amphion Innovations. The deal covers all Red Hat products and derivative works, according to Red Hat.
Another infringement suit against Red Hat filed by IP Innovation in 2007 is still outstanding.