One month ago Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC filed a patent lawsuit against the GNOME Foundation for patent infringement in the Shotwell photo manager.
Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC offered to pay the GNOME Foundation a sum "into five figures" to drop the lawsuit and license Shotwell to continue developing it.
GNOME states: βAgreeing to this would be easier and would cost a lot less money, but it is wrong. This agreement would allow this patent to be used as a weapon against many other projects. We will stand firm against this baseless attack not only on GNOME and Shotwell, but on all open source software."
GNOME Foundation Executive Director Neil McGovern directed legal counsel at Shearman & Sterling to file three documents in court in California:
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First, a motion to dismiss the case completely. GNOME does not accept that this patent is valid or that programs can or should be patented in this manner. So the project wants to make sure that this patent will not be used against anyone else, ever.
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Secondly, the response to the complaint. Denial that GNOME should answer this question. The project wants to show that Shotwell and free software in general are not affected by this patent.
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Thirdly, a counterclaim. GNOME wants to show that this is not just the case, so that Rothschild understands that they are going to fight this.
GNOME also said: "Patent trolls, we will fight your lawsuits, win and invalidate your patents."
To do this, GNOME asked for help from the community - "please help the GNOME Foundation make it clear that patent trolls should never go against free software by donating to GNOME Patent Troll Defense Fund. If you can't, please spread the word about this among your friends and on social media. networks."
Source: linux.org.ru