The Linux Foundation has become a patent troll - eviltoast

It seems that the Linux Foundation has decided that both “systemd” and “segmentation fault” (lol?) are trademarked by them.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Can a third party lodge a complaint and claim to be acting on behalf of The Linux Foundation? Maybe someone is trolling here.

      • moonpiedumplings@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        Isn’t that what copyright/patent trolls are? People who lodge complaints on the behalf of others, regardless of whether or not the original owner of the intellectual property actually cares, or in some cases, even is legally allowed to do so? If it’s the original owner, then it’s usually just considered to be protecting property.

        • wmassingham@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          No, patent trolling is when you patent a bunch of stuff and make money by suing people instead of actually producing that product.

          Filing complaints on behalf of someone you don’t legally represent is fraud.

          • moonpiedumplings@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            Well damn, I guess fraud must be a lot more widespread than I thought. Because no one seems to get punished for this behavior. Just recently, Lockpick, a tool for getting Nintendo Switch roms off a physical device, was dmca’d, and the person who filed the complaint admitted to doing so on twitter. They received no punishment.

            I think it’s likely that this is a similar case.

            • thesmokingman@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              Unless the company you’re impersonating does something, nothing will happen. Hosts like Twitch and YouTube don’t care about whether or not a DMCA is fraud because it’s just easier for them to remove the content and delegate resolution to not them. It’s easy to abuse and often is; no one with money cares enough to do anything.

        • Shareni@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          Here’s a great explanation from silicone valley. .

          The best example I know of is Microsoft buying up insanely broad patents that can be marginally related to Linux, getting Suse to say Linux totally infringed on Microsoft’s patents in exchange for not getting sued and selling Linux licences to MS, and then harrasing the shit out of every Linux software and hardware manufacturer for over a decade. They stopped when they realised Linux is not going down and that they depend on it for their infrastructure, and that EEE is a better strategy overall. So now they gave away those patents, and Suse is out while Canonical is in.