Infringement Claims
Microsoft has claimed that free software such as OpenOffice.org and the Linux kernel violate 235 Microsoft patents and said that it will seek licence fees, but has so far failed to disclose which patents they violate. However, the 2009 lawsuit against TomTom involved the use of Microsoft's patents for long filenames on FAT filesystems, the code for which is in the Linux kernel, not in any TomTom-developed software.
In January 2008, Trend Micro accused Barracuda Networks of patent infringement for distribution of the ClamAV anti-virus software.
Read more about this topic: Software Patents And Free Software
Famous quotes containing the words infringement and/or claims:
“The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the infringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Let me live onward; you shall find that, though slower, the progress of my character will liquidate all these debts without injustice to higher claims. If a man should dedicate himself to the payment of notes, would not this be an injustice? Does he owe no debt but money? And are all claims on him to be postponed to a landlord’s or a banker’s?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)