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)
“So immense are the claims on a mother, physical claims on her bodily and brain vigor, and moral claims on her heart and thoughts, that she cannot ... meet them all and find any large margin beyond for other cares and work. She serves the community in the very best and highest way it is possible to do, by giving birth to healthy children, whose physical strength has not been defrauded, and to whose moral and mental nature she can give the whole of her thoughts.”
—Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904)