Red Hat Settles Patent Case With Acacia... But Won't Share The Details

Of the software companies out there, Red Hat has been the most aggressive in fighting against software patents. It's stood up on principle, and earlier this year even won a lawsuit from one of Acacia's many, many shell companies (and it won in East Texas too, making it that much more impressive). However, Slashdot points us to the news that, in another lawsuit involving another Acacia shell company (this time, called Software Tree) it looks like Red Hat has settled -- and, unfortunately, it's keeping pretty quiet about what happened. I'm sure that's part of the terms that Acacia negotiated (patent hoarders never want the details of settlements released), but it's unfortunate, because it leaves everyone else in the dark, and lets Acacia continue to shake down others with this patent. The patent in question (6,163,776) covers "System and method for exchanging data and commands between an object oriented system and a relational system," because, you know, without patents, no one would have ever figured that out.

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Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101004/21311611286/red-hat-settles-patent-case-with-acacia-but-won-t-share-the-details.shtml

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