Texas judge sends Uniloc packing in Rackspace patent suit In a rare move, the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has granted early dismissal of a patent lawsuit filed by Uniloc against Rackspace, having found that Uniloc's patent described nothing more than a mathematical formula and was therefore invalid. "The early dismissal of this case delivers a clear message …
Now if others were as smart, including the patent office. The problem is that "prior art" to the patent office is only what is patented, not much else.
We in the computer field, know that LOTS of stuff is known (possibly "novel") but not patented, and been public for over a year.
Reach for that clue stick!
"Rackspace was defended in the suit by Red Hat, which offers its customers indemnification against intellectual property claims under its Open Source Assurance program."
Notice that "offering indemnification" is something that Google doesn't do for its partners. In spite of the fact that Google is a gazillion times bigger than Red Hat.
"Uniloc's patent describes a process where you round the numbers first and then do the arithmetic"
Doing that in solar system simulations has planets flying wildly - space:1999 style - in short order.
That notwithstanding, you'd be surprised how many astrophysicists attempt to do things in that order and wonder why the results don't look like real life.
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