Firestar, Datatern settle patent claims with Red Hat

By Ed Oswald | Published June 11, 2008, 11:05 AM

Red Hat said Wednesday that it had settled claims against it from two companies related to a method of interfacing with a database.

Firestar produces a product called EdgeNode, which is a system that assists in the exchange of business transactions between enterprises. DataTern's signature product is ObjectSpark, which is a runtime engine that "manages delivery and persistence of data" across an application and multiple data sources.

Firestar originally sued Red Hat in 2006 over infringement claims with regard to one patent, described as "a mapping between an object model and a relational database generated to facilitate access to the relational database." The rights to that patent were handed over to Datatern, which then continued the suit against Red Hat. The Linux producer denied any wrongdoing and opted to fight the allegations in the courts.

That fight never made it to the courtroom, as the two sides have reached a settlement. However, Red Hat is boasting that the agreement it has reached with the two companies will have far-reaching effects for the entire open source community.

Simply put, the company did not win protection from suits just for itself; rather, the settlement protects both "upstream" and "downstream" developers. This means that both Red Hat's customers and those who build upon the company's products will be completely shielded.

"This broad coverage is a significant benefit to the open source community," the company said in a statement describing the settlement. Red Hat seemed to term the settlement as a way to stand up against "patent aggressors," and to discourage similar cases in the future.

Red Hat has taken a hard line stance against software patents, saying they impede on innovation in open source. The company argues that transparency is needed in order for open source to work, since it requires a good deal of sharing between multiple parties.

Another infringement suit against Red Hat is still outstanding: that one was filed by IP Innovation and Technology Licensing Corp in 2007.

Requests for comment from DataTern and Firestar were not immediately returned.