A month ago, GNOME received a patent troll for developing the Shotwell image management application. Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC has filed a lawsuit alleging infringements of the Shotwell patent.
Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC invited them to agree to a high five-figure sum for which they would terminate the business and give Gnome a license to continue developing Shotwell. This would cause less work, cost less money and provide the GNOME Foundation much less stress. But that would also be wrong.
Consent to this will leave this patent alive and allow it to be used as a weapon against other free software projects. The GNOME Foundation will stand firm against this baseless attack, not only on GNOME and Shotwell, but also on all free, open source software projects.
For these reasons, GNOME Foundation Executive Director Neil McGovern instructed the legal adviser at Shearman & Sterling to file three documents with a California court.
First: a motion to close the case.
Second: response to the lawsuit.
Third: counterclaim.
Help support the GNOME Foundation in sending out messages so that patent trolls never interfere with free software by donating to the "GNOME Patent Troll Defense Fund". If you can’t, please help spread it through your friends on social networks.
More information can be found here.