Red Hat Settles with Firestar

News out of Boston that Red Hat has settled the long-running patent infringement lawsuit filed against it by Firestar Software and a later suit filed against the company by DataTern.

Filed on June 26, 2006, the lawsuit by Massachusetts-based software vendor Firestar Software, Inc. was brought against Red Hat in connection the Hibernate 3.0 software product acquired by Red Hat through its then-recent acquisition of JBoss. In the lawsuit, Firestar alleged that JBoss and Red Hat are infringing U.S. patent number 6,101,502 (issued on August 8, 2000) through their activities relating to Hibernate. While software patent infringement lawsuits had become increasingly frequent in the world of proprietary software at the time of the lawsuit, the suit was viewed as the first of its kind relating to a widely distributed open source software product.

The specific financial and other terms of the settlement were not disclosed. However, Red Hat indicates that the settlement includes broad terms covering “all software distributed under Red Hat’s brands.”  Of particular note, the settlement also protects all “upstream predecessor versions” as well.   In addition, Red Hat indicates that the settlement protects “derivative works of, or combination products using, the covered products from any patent claim based in any respect on the covered products.” Perhaps most importantly (for shareholder of Red Hat in particular), the company indicates that the settlement is sufficient to enable RedHat (and its users) to continue to distribute its open source software products in compliance with the terms of all applicable open source licenses.

In its press release on the settlement, Red Hat indicates that the settlements leave Red Hat with one remaining patent infringement suit against it — based on a complaint filed in October 2007 by IP Innovation LLC and Technology Licensing Corp, both subsidiaries of patent troll (er, “holding company”) Acacia Media.

Intellectual Property and Sarbanes-Oxley?

What does the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (or “SOX”) have to do with intellectual property you ask? While these two topics have historically made for strange bedfellows, the importance of managing intellectual property assets and issues surrounding those assets under Sarbanes-Oxley is increasingly becoming a potential trap for the unwary.

Passed into law in 2001 in large response to the then-recent corporate corruption and fraud scandals involving the likes of Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth, Tyco, Adelphia and others, Sarbanes-Oxley represents one of the most sweeping changes in U.S. securities laws in the past 70 years. In the wake of these scandals, SOX attempted to bolster investor confidence by increasing transparency and accountability in financial accounting involving public companies here in the U.S. SOX has proven, however, to be much more than a law addressing financial accounting. SOX is written broadly to trigger obligations with respect to any and all assets that have a material impact on the financial condition of a public company — including IP assets.  As intellectual property assets have come to comprise an increasingly more material part of the value of most all companies (not just “technology” companies, but all companies that rely on technology to conduct their day-to-day operations), intellectual property has come to play an ever more material role in the financial condition of those companies. As a result, intellectual property assets and the management of those assets and issues relating to those assets has (and will continue) to pose an increasingly more important issue with respect to SOX compliance (notably, even as to companies for which it has not posed an issue in the past). While the issue of SOX and IP will be front and center for public companies, even private companies that plan in the future to become publicly traded or that are planning an exit by merger or acquisition with a public company, should be wary of the potential risks posed by IP under SOX.

Earlier this week I covered this topic and discussed the growing importance of the management of intellectual property assets under Sarbanes-Oxley in a presentation at the 2008 Intellectual Property Institute in Denver. I had the pleasure of sharing the stage for the presentation with Dean Salter, one of my partners at Holme Roberts & Owen and truly the “dean” of the Denver securities law community. As usual when presenting with someone of Dean’s stature, I probably ended up taking away from the presentation just about as much as I contributed. The materials from the presentation are available online if you would like to read more about this topic. We will also be giving the presentation as a webinar later this year. Stay tuned for details.

“Lawyering Skills” Courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court

For those of you who have not yet seen this (and I was one of you until earlier today), Bryan Garner, the founder of LawProse and the editor-in-chief of Black’s Law Dictionary (as well as a fantastic version of the Official Rules of Golf), has recently conducted a series of interviews with of the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court (with the notable exception of Justice David Souter) regarding legal writing and other lawyer skills.  Garner is truly one of the definitive authorities (if not the definitive authority) on legal writing and legal usage of the English language (and, yes, he is a major proponent of the use of plain English in the law and legal writing).  He brings great depth and background to the interviews.  The interviews are available online on the LawProse web site.  I encourage you to take a look.

Cert denied on In re Seagate

A quick update on a previous post regarding In re Seagate Technology LLC. In Seagate, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit CAFC expressly overturned prior precedent and raised the standard for determining whether a patent infringement is willful from one requiring an “affirmative duty to exercise due care to determine whether or not [one] is infringing” if one is merely on “actual notice of another’s patent rights” to a far higher standard requiring “objective recklessness.” In doing so, the CAFC effectively raised the bar for a finding of willful patent infringement to a substantially higher level than the previous standard of mere negligence, thus making it more difficult for a patent holder to prove a claim for willful infringement.

While the decision on willful infringement in the Seagate case was significant (some even called it “seismic“), the Seagate case itself had been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, leaving the door open to a potential reversal or modification of the decision. However, on February 25th, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition to review the Seagate case (including the decision on willful infringement). While not carrying the same weight as an actual decision by the Supreme Court, the denial affectively serves to establish the standard of “objective recklessness” as the law of the land.

Many have gone so far as to say that this decision now removes the affirmative obligation that a patent infringement defendant have obtained an opinion from competent legal counsel before initiating possibly infringing activity. Whether this actually proves to be the legacy of Seagate still remains to be seen. However, at minimum, the decision by the Supreme Court cements Seagate as yet another step in the further judicial reform of patent laws here in the U.S.

For more information on the case, see Convolve Inc. v. Seagate Technology LLC (U.S., No. 07-656, review denied 2/25/08) .

IP “Crash Course” Online

Thanks to the sponsorship of Silicon Flatirons, TechStars, the Longmont Entrepreneurial Network (or “LEN” for short), and Colorado Capital Group we were able to put on a great Intellectual Property “Crash Course” for Entrepreneurs presentation at the end of last month before a standing-room-only crowd at the University of Colorado School of Law. Thanks to all of you who attended the event (especially those who had to sit in the aisles or stand during the presentation)!

As I mentioned during the event, the presentation was recorded. While I had hoped to have had the audio portion of the presentation online by now, we are still working to have the audio synchronized with the slides before posting. Since many of you have been (patiently) waiting for the presentation to be posted online, I have gone ahead and posted a copy of the slides to this site. I am hoping that this will suffice until we can get the audio synchronized and uploaded. Please stay tuned for the audio — and thank you for your patience. ;-)