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24 Apr 2006
KAM Industries has locked horns with the Java Model Railroad Interface (JMRI) open source software project over alleged patent violations.
Both organisations develop tools that allow hobbyists to control and manage model railways using computers.
KAM Industries alleges that the open source project, which is run by Robert Jacobson, violates a patent owned by KAM.
The firm has not filed any legal claims, but has invoiced Jacobson $29 per distributed copy of its application, a total of $203,000.
Jacobson has retaliated with a lawsuit against KAM Industries and its founder Matthew Katzer.
The suit asks the court to invalidate the patent and rule that the company engaged in illegal acts to monopolise the market for multi-train control software in the US. He is also demanding $50,000 in damages as well as punitive damages.
The case offers a rare example of a patent holder going after an open source developer, which is generally believed to be the Achilles heel of open source projects.
There have allegedly been previous cases, but these have been settled by the defendant agreeing to a non-disclosure clause thereby keeping the details under wraps.
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Software patents are bad, whats good about it !?
Its simply not understandable why the European and U.S. patent office approve so many software patents that for the average IT person are as obvious as hell. For example the European patent office recently approved the European version of the Amazon one buy click patent. Where are the patent examiners sitting ? They live in a cave ? There has been so much publicity on the internet about the patent yet the European Patent office found it good enough. The patent should have been thrown out at reading the summary! Its nothing more then a browser cookie that is matches! A person who writes his first lines of code already violates a trainload of patents. How the heck can innovation then continue to move forward in the I.T. industry if every nut and bold of software is patented. The idea that the open source community would need to start reviewing patents is the best joke ever. So many goverment leaders want innovation and like what they see on open source software. Yet they try to push on legislation in the European Union that allows for broad US styled software patents. Software can be compared to writing music. Its a creative process. In the end the only people that win from software patents are not inventorsl, it are lawyers. The genereal public also looses out because of competition being reduced. Lawyers benefit from processing patents, processing letters from people that want royalties, they are the ones that do the work for lawsuits. They are also the driving forse behind the lobby in the European Union. Now the the new danger are the IP only companies. Read up on the D.M.T. technology from Acacia research. And you realy wonder how many people where sleeping on the job when these patents where approved. Copyright protects software more then enough.
Posted by: Roderick Klein 25 Apr 2006