Red Hat Settles Two of Three Patent Suits

Red Hat has settled two of three latent lawsuits against it, securing terms that protect its Linux distribution - and its customers - from action by Firestar and DataTern.

Linux distributor Red Hat has announced that it has reached a settlement in two of three patent lawsuits brought against the company. Although Red Hat did not disclose the financial terms of the settlement, it is emphasizing the settlement protects not only Red Hat but also—in an almost unprecedented move—protects customers who rely on its LInux distribution.

“Typically when a company settles a patent lawsuit, it focuses on getting safety for itself,” said Red Hat VP and assistant general counsel Rob Tiller, in a statement. “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.”

Under the terms of the settlement, both Red Hat customers and upstream developers receive a perpetual, fully-paid, royalty-free irrevocable worldwide license to the patents in the suit. As a result, the settlement places no encumbrance on the open software movement.

The patent battle began in 2006 when Firestar filed suit against Red Hat, claiming that Hibernate, a JBoss product, infringes on a patent related to a middleware layer between a software application and a relational database. Red Hat denied any infringement; as the case was proceeding, Firestar assigned the patent to DataTern, which joined the suit. The suit did not claim that Red Hat Enterprise Linux had infringed on the patent. DataTern filed a separate suit in April 2008 alleging infringement on another patent; that suit will also be dismissed as a result of the settlement.

Red Hat is still defending against a third patent lawsuit brought by IP Innovation LLC and Technology License Corporation in October 2007.