Speaker(s):

Keynote: Patently Obvious - The year the lawyers came to FOSS

Oct-20. 15:00-15:35.


In August 2019, GNOME was notified that it was being sued in the state of California over a broad patent which allegedly covered Shotwell, a photo management application. The plaintiff? A prolific filer of patent suits, and a patent assertion entity. This was the first time that a FOSS project has been sued for patent infringement. This talk is the story from the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, on how he responded and the strategies taken to not only defeat the suit, but to secure a ground-breaking agreement which means that this particular PAE will never be able to sue any FOSS project ever again.