Rackspace Goes On Rampage Against Patent Trolls 132
girlmad writes "Rackspace has come out fighting against one of the U.S.'s most notorious patent trolls, Parallel Iron. The cloud services firm said it's totally fed up with trolls of all kinds, which have caused a 500 percent rise in its legal bills. Rackspace was last week named among 12 firms accused of infringing Parallel Iron's Hadoop Distributed File System patents. Rackspace is now counter-suing the troll, as the firm said it has a deal in place with Parallel Iron after signing a previous patent settlement with them."
Imagine that (Score:3, Informative)
Trolls Will Always Troll (Score:2, Informative)
You can't make a deal with a troll. They will always come back for more. It's just their nature to be greedy assholes who want everything for nothing.
Dear Rackspace: fight the good fight.
WTF is the link to? (Score:5, Informative)
It might as well be spam in my inbox.
Why not just link the damn blog post by Rackspace itself? link [rackspace.com]
Re:Getting "tough"? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, this is just a really really horrible summary.
What really happened: IP Nav had approached Rackspace, claiming that Rackspace was infringing some patents of an unnamed client of theirs. IP Nav told Rackspace that they would disclose neither the identity of their client nor the patents in question unless Rackspace signed an agreement not to sue without giving 30 days written notice that their side was terminating licensing negotiations. As it turns out, the agreement went both ways, with IP Nav agreeing to the same 30 day written notice provision. (Peculiarities of patent law are such that if a patentee approaches you about your potential infringement, you can sue them for a declaratory judgment of noninfringement in a federal district court of your choosing; IP Nav was trying to avoid this so they could choose the venue.)
Rackspace agreed to those terms, and found out the patents in question as well as the identity of the patent holder: Parallel Iron.
After some time had passed, licensing talks weren't really going anywhere, so IP Nav/Parallel Iron filed suit against Rackspace and others in federal district court in Delaware.... without providing 30 days written notice to Rackspace. So Rackspace - indicating that since IP Nav/Parallel Iron breached the contract not to sue, Rackspace was no longer bound by the agreement - filed suit in Texas (where Rackspace is HQed) for a declaratory judgment of noninfringement as well as damages for the breach of contract.
Ars has more details, including a link to Rackspace's complaint. [arstechnica.com]
Re:Getting "tough"? (Score:4, Informative)
Bad summary. According to a post on the Rackspace blog, "we negotiated a mutual forbearance agreement that required either party to give 30 days’ notice before bringing suit." It isn't that they had agreed to pay the troll, it's that Rackspace was doing their best to get the details about the alleged infringement without waiving their right to bring a countersuit. Source: http://www.rackspace.com/blog/why-rackspace-sued-the-most-notorious-patent-troll-in-america/ [rackspace.com].