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Red Hat Sued Over Hibernate ORM Patent Claim

Posted by CowboyNeal on Fri Jun 30, 2006 06:39 AM
from the done-it-first dept.
Businesses Red Hat Software Patents Government The Courts News
fmarines writes "Firestar Software has filed a patent claim against Red Hat for infringing on a patent Firestar filed in 2000 covering O/R mapping. The amount of the lawsuit was not disclosed. The complaint centers around JBoss 3, and the patent claims that JBoss was given prior notice that marketing, distribution, and support services violates Firestar's patent, and that Firestar 'has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial damages.' Firestar produces the ObjectSpark, an transactional object mapping engine which appears to not have had a new release since May 2003, according to the Firestar press release page."
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  • Red Hat Sued Over Hibernate 3 ORM Patent Infringement Claim
    Posted by Floyd Marinescu on jun 29, 2006 09:40 PM

    Community Java Topics Legal Matters, Data Access, Business
    Firestar Software has filed a patent claim against Red Hat for infringing on a patent Firestar filed in 2000 covering O/R mapping. The amount of the lawsuit was not disclosed. The complaint centers around JBoss 3, and the patent claims that JBoss was given prior notice that marketing, distribution, and support services violates Firestars patent, and that Firestar "has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial damages." Firestar produces the ObjectSpark, an transactional object mapping engine which appears to not have had a new release since May 2003, according to the Firestars press release page.

    The patent covers (from US Patent office patent # 6,101,502):
    A method for interfacing an object oriented software application with a relational database, comprising the steps of:

    selecting an object model;
    generating a map of at least some relationships between schema in the database and the selected object model;
    employing the map to create at least one interface object associated with an object corresponding to a class associated with the object oriented software application; and
    utilizing a runtime engine which invokes said at least one interface object with the object oriented application to access data from the relational database. ide interface objects that are utilized by an object oriented software application to access the relational database.
    Interestingly, the same patent (follow link for full PDFs) was filed under a different company name to the European patent office back in 1998, but was withdrawn. The patent is not related to yet another patent Mapping architecture for arbitrary data models filed in 2005.

    Patent experts told InfoQ that the lawsuit appears to be skillful manoeuvring on Firestar's part; they waited until after the JBoss Red Hat acquisition intentions were announced and notified JBoss about the potential infringement on May 26th, which was within the JBoss Red Hat due dilligence period. This would have required JBoss to either instantly settle with Firestar or be forced to notify Red Hat which could have cancelled the acquisition deal, which was announced as finalized on June 5th (with Red Hat aware of the risks). Firestar then notified Red Hat on June 7th that they were in violation of Firestar's patent. As a further example of manoeuvring, the word among patent experts is that the specific district Firestar selected to perform the lawsuit in (eastern district of Texas) is famous among patent circles because a patent claimant has never lost a lawsuit there.

    It seems clear that the timing of the lawsuit was designed to take advantage of the Red Hat acquisition. Firestar certainly had other potential targets, including Oracle (TopLink), BEA (Kodo), and even the JCP (EJB JPA).

    Note: updated June 29th, 10:40pm

  • Time to implement public caning (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2006, @06:46AM (#15635216)
    Continue allowing these suits to be brought before the court. However, if the plaintiff loses on the basis of an invalid patent, he/she will receive 100 lashes with wet bamboo strips -- the plaintiff's attorneys as well.

  • Blah (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ms1234 (211056) on Friday June 30 2006, @06:54AM (#15635246)
    So they're not doing that well and need cash?
    • I know it's technically correct according to business jargon, but they say they're "suffering losses" - as if it's their God given right to have an artificial monopoly.

      • Re:Blah (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ThosLives (686517) on Friday June 30 2006, @07:35AM (#15635425) Journal
        What's really interesting is that if I open a restaraunt, and a guy next door opens a restaraunt, and people like the food and/or service of the guy next door better, my restaraunt will "suffer losses."

        I do not think that "suffering losses" means what people think it means...

  • Legal System Upgrade (Score:4, Insightful)

    by freemywrld (821105) on Friday June 30 2006, @06:55AM (#15635248) Homepage
    What we really need here is a proverbial SPAM filter on lawsuits for things like this. It is no wonder that people and/or companies with valid claims tend to hesitate to take their claims to court, knowing that this kind of hogwash is bogging down the system.
    Seems like Firestar's time could be better spent actually developing something new, instead of sitting around waiting for an excuse to sue in order to generate some cashflow.

  • TFA seems confused (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Brian Blessed (258910) on Friday June 30 2006, @06:55AM (#15635251)
    It says:
    The complaint centers around JBoss 3

    JBoss 3 was released in May 2002.
    However, Hibernate wasn't a JBoss project until September 2003.

    I'd guess that the claim relates to Hibernate 3, but they are desperate to mention JBoss as much as possible for the FUD value.

  • Buy a company - get sued! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Corrado (64013) <rnhurt.gmail@com> on Friday June 30 2006, @06:55AM (#15635252) Homepage Journal
    This is really low - wait until your software gets in heavy rotation and then go after people using it. My question is why did they go after RedHat/JBoss? Why not go after the big dogs; Oracle (TopLink), BEA (Kodo), and even the JCP (EJB JPA)?

    Again, software patents are a bad idea.
    • There should definitely be a clause that in order to retain your patent you have to challenge any infringements as soon as you are aware of them, not just wait until the infringement has gone on long enough to really cash in.

      I believe that this sort of thing is written into law in various places, especially civil law (eg adverse possession).

      The only problem would be the 'as soon as you are aware of them' bit...
    • To set the groundwork for a lawsuit against a larger company. If they sue a smaller company that is less able to defend itself then they've created a great foothold to move forward with a suit against the big boys.

  • Conspiracy theory... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jkrise (535370) on Friday June 30 2006, @06:58AM (#15635261) Journal
    1. JBoss gains widespread acceptance, and threatens Sun's Java model, dominance.
    2. Despite Sun introducing new enhancements, developers are switching to the JBoss architecture and portal in droves.
    3. RedHat acquires JBoss, gets sued, and loses - 'tainting' JBoss in the process.
    4. Sun wins - one big competitor tainted and gone.... MS wins - open source apps around JBoss fall away.
    Sound plausible?

    • Re:Conspiracy theory... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by powerpointmonkey (840630) on Friday June 30 2006, @07:13AM (#15635317)
      Last time I looked at Jboss, it was written in Java, and as such is helping to Spread Sun's dominance.

      Unles of course you meant to say Sun's application server / portal server dominance, in which case, please excuse me while I fall of my chair laughing. - Neither products are going anywhere.

      Jboss is not a competitor to Sun. IBM and BEA maybe, but not Sun.

  • Is Ruby on Rails Affected? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Corrado (64013) <rnhurt.gmail@com> on Friday June 30 2006, @07:03AM (#15635278) Homepage Journal
    Just took a quick read of the patent and it looks like this is a pretty wide reaching patent. Anything that maps a database to an object is covered by this one. Does this mean Ruby on Rails is under the gun? Of course, they have no money (I guess) so they wouldn't be a target. But they would still be violating a patent and that could limit their future growth potential.

    • Anything that maps a database to an object is covered by this one.

      It's a specific method, but it's a pretty widely-used one nowadays, yes.

      Does this mean Ruby on Rails is under the gun?

      I would assume so. I think SQLObject for Python would be a possible target too.

      Important to note (as you do) that Hibernate et al are far more profitable targets here though.

  • We need reforms which basically state that if you choose to enforce your patents selectively then you should lose them.

    You either license to everyone you intend to allow use of your patent or you lose it.. you should not be allowed to hide in wait and opportunistically/arbitrarily ambush companies and developers.

    This should especially apply to companies who apply for patents, then sit on them while other companies do the work, only to sue them and take all their credit and revenue.

    That's not capitalist.. it's parasitic.
    • You either license to everyone you intend to allow use of your patent or you lose it.. you should not be allowed to hide in wait and opportunistically/arbitrarily ambush companies and developers.

      That would be disasterous. You forget to account for the number of companies who do real work and hold patents for MAD purposes. Give those companies lawyer's a choice between "enforcement" and "losing the patent", and a significant proportion of them will choose "enforcement".

  • Sue them back into oblivion. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by lowieken (522530) on Friday June 30 2006, @07:09AM (#15635301) Homepage
    Firestarter Software is probably not doing very well. Why else would they launch a software patent lawsuit? On top of that, they have actual products in the market. Seems to me that this makes them very vulnerable to countersuits.

    Am I right thinking it shouldn't be too difficult to sue Firestarter Software into oblivion?

    • Am I right thinking it shouldn't be too difficult to sue Firestarter Software into oblivion?

      I counter your "mapping an object model to a relational database" patent with my "mapping a relational database to a magnetic disk" patent of +3 vorpal.

  • Prior Art? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Phil John (576633) <phil.webstarsltd@com> on Friday June 30 2006, @07:10AM (#15635302)

    Surely there's a wealth or prior art for this kind of thing, ORM was popular before 2000. What about Next Computer's Enterprise Objects Framework [wikipedia.org]? That's been around since at least 1994 according to WikiPedia - it still lives on as part of Apple's WebObjects system.

    • There were a lot of them.

      Its a shame its going to cost RedHat a pile of money to prove it, though.
        • See SCO vs IBM.

          SCO had to come to an agreement with their lawyers because they were going to go broke before a settlement occurred. (31 million dollars and something precent of whatever the outcome was.)

    • Re:Prior Art? (Score:4, Informative)

      by MemoryDragon (544441) on Friday June 30 2006, @07:34AM (#15635416)
      Toplink also has been there fore ages (92 or 93), the patent is not worth the toilet paper it was written on, and as usual the USPTO has proven not to have any knowledge of the fields it grants patents on.

    • Enterprise Objects certainly implements everything described by that patent and a bit more because it provides a data access controller layer (not just a data model layer). Not to mention I've had some limited experience viewing someone else's hibernate-based code. EO/WO is so much better than Hibernate can ever hope to be.

  • ...Economics.

  • Ohm, Prior art? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sweetshark (696449) on Friday June 30 2006, @07:20AM (#15635356)
    All these projects have been registered before or in 2000 (when the patent has been filed according to TFA):
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/jgrinder [sourceforge.net]
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/leap [sourceforge.net]
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/neo [sourceforge.net]
    http://sourceforge.net/projects/nexusproject [sourceforge.net]

    As this is a patent it shouldnt matter too much, if they actually had a working implementation at that time. (IANAL and all that jazz).

  • Time for Red Hat to leave the USA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Alain Williams (2972) on Friday June 30 2006, @07:24AM (#15635373) Homepage
    Relocate to Europe where we don't have this patent lunacy[**]. These patent trolls would then be limited to trying to steal the USA turnover of Red Hat; Red Hat could perhaps take the option of abandoning the USA market. If Red Hat were to leave the USA it would send a strong message to congress how patents damage the USA economy ... they might even decide that doing right by their country is preferable to accepting the slush funds from the patent lobbyists.

    They have some nice offices here, no language problems for existing staff if they move to Guildford (UK).

    [**] - OK -- I know that some are trying to introduce it, but the EU seems to not be that stupid (fingers crossed)

    • Re:Time for Red Hat to leave the USA (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Erwos (553607) on Friday June 30 2006, @07:33AM (#15635410)
      Be real. Do you really think Red Hat is going to up and leave the country because of a single software patent suit? This is the same Red Hat that established a legal defense fund for just this sort of thing - if anything, I would think they're going to enjoy the opportunity to crush these guys like a bug.

      As for the "EU not being that stupid", good luck with that - they've proven time and time again that the US has no monopoly on idiocy.

      -Erwos
    • They'd have to completely stop doing in business with US firms to avoid a lawsuit like this. I don't see that happening.

  • Invalid patent; no defense (Score:3, Informative)

    by gvc (167165) on Friday June 30 2006, @07:26AM (#15635383)
    Recall that RIM was forced to settle to the tune of half-a-billion dollars even though the patents were in the process of being successfully challenged. I don't know if the settlement involved dropping the challenge, too.

    I have read the patent and in my opinion it does not describe a method at all. It is just an example, with a few diagrams, of how a mapping might be done. There are thousands of academic papers that describe systematic ways of doing this, and lots of products, too.

    So what exactly does this patent cover? A for instance of how to map the "name" method of an object into a "name" column in a table?

    It is laughable that this patent was granted; however, I doubt Red Hat share the laughter.
    • Recall that RIM was forced to settle to the tune of half-a-billion dollars even though the patents were in the process of being successfully challenged.
      I vote that we call this sort of bottom feeding patent extortion scam RIMMING.
  • Prior Art, 10 times over. No case. Thank you. Next.

  • Prior Art (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bbroerman (715822) on Friday June 30 2006, @07:40AM (#15635446) Homepage
    At my company, we wrote software that basically does the same thing back in the late 80's - early 90's and have been using it for high-profile, high-cost software ever since... While I don't know if we ever applied for a patent on the idea, I would bet that there is a lot of prior art out there... I just hope that Red Hat's lawyers are good enough to find it and use it appropriately.

  • smalltalk (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 30 2006, @07:49AM (#15635476)
    Smalltalk at an OR/M mapping engine from about 1994. I think I'm right in saying it was subsequently acquired by Oracle, ported to Java and became know as Toplink. In any case it's a pretty clear-cut prior art so the patent won't stand if anyone wants to defend it.
  • Would someone kindly translate the FP's title for those of us not intimate (in the Biblical sense) with Java's current political environment?

  • Firestar's not the only one (Score:3, Funny)

    by defile (1059) on Friday June 30 2006, @08:15AM (#15635577) Homepage Journal
    We too have suffered and will continue to suffer substantial damages due to Hibernate.

  • They said contact them.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by 955301 (209856) on Friday June 30 2006, @09:56AM (#15636252) Journal
    Thank you for reading that wonderful article everyone. You may now reach Firestars public relations department at the following email address:

    "Media Contact
    Contact our public relations group to inquire about press information, to arrange interviews, to receive company information or bios of key personnel, and to request media/press kits.
    pr@firestarsoftware.com"

    Sales and Marketing and partnerships seem to be the same fool:
    Rob McGowan
    SVP, Sales and Marketing
    FireStar Software, Inc.
    Phone: (201) 784-3894, (201) 522-7788
    E-mail: McGowan@firestarsoftware.com

    Have fun, be creative!

  • Patenter Don't Know Shit (Score:4, Informative)

    by Bob9113 (14996) on Friday June 30 2006, @10:02AM (#15636305) Homepage
    6. The method of claim 1 further including the step of mapping class inheritance to rows within a table.

    Clearly the person writing the patent doesn't understand object oriented programming or databases. Row 2 extends row 1? I think not (except maybe as a lab experiment proving it's possible).

    And as an aside, I have violated this patent. Twice. A friend of mine working on the same project was violating it at the same time. Then we hired a third guy who violated it again. Yes, we have a project which contains four, count 'em, four, independently developed O-R mapping tools. Three of them (one of mine and the two others) were developed not knowing the others existed. Then someone recommended TopLink, which we chose not to use. Then a friend of mine showed me WebObjects, which we chose not to use. Then we hired a guy who told us about Hibernate, which we now use. WebObjects started as a NeXT project in the mid 90's. TopLink is older than the patent (I think). Our independent implementations were done without knowing about any of the existing tools or the patent, and before (I admit with some shame) we were aware of Scott Ambler's outstanding research on the subject (which dates back to 1998).

    Summary judgement to the defendant, obvious and not novel.

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