A notorious “patent troll” — an acquirer of vague or trivial patents whose only real business is to shake down companies that offer implicated products — recently targeted GNOME, developers of a popular desktop environment for the Linux family of operating systems. GNOME fired back yesterday, asking a judge to dismiss the troll’s lawsuit.
First: a motion to dismiss the case outright. We don’t believe that this is a valid patent, or that software can or should be able to be patented in this way. We want to make sure that this patent isn’t used against anyone else, ever.
Second: our answer to the claim. We don’t believe that there is a case GNOME needs to answer to. We want to show that the use of Shotwell, and free software in general, isn’t affected by this patent.
Third: our counterclaim. We want to make sure that this isn’t just dropped when Rothschild realizes we’re going to fight this.
We want to send a message to all software patent trolls out there — we will fight your suit, we will win, and we will have your patent invalidated.