Tomboy's role in GNOME has made it a troublesome component that grabs an entire Mono stack into many GNU/Linux distributions. For reasons that were brought up before, the TomTom lawsuit teaches everyone why Mono does not belong in GNU/Linux.

"It's nice to actually feel welcome, because, for many years I was like the boogey man at conferences. People would come and present their software and they'd show what new features they'd coded in the last year, and then I'd come along and say soffftwaaaare paaatents. I'd have to tell everyone to be scared."

Two notices of dismissal have been filed with the courts -- Microsoft's in Washington State, and TomTom's in Virginia, each dismissed without prejudice, ending both patent litigations. "Without prejudice" means that either could ramp it up and do this some more in the future, should circumstances arise that made it necessary. But in most cases, it means the litigation, or whatever, is over.

AMIDST AND DESPITE some AMQP controversy [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], Red Hat is inviting people to join an AMQP Conference at the University of California. AMQP made the headlines recently because of software patents that Red Hat obtained in this area.

Can Microsoft navigate its way out of this one? Summary: A detailed overview and some analysis of TomTom's countersuit.

Microsoft Corp. was sued by Dutch navigation-device maker TomTom NV, which claims the world’s largest software maker infringes four of its patents used for automobile navigation.
The suit comes less than a month after Microsoft filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington seeking to block some of TomTom’s U.S. imports.

Patent and copyright law are stifling innovation and threatening the global economy according to two economists at Washington University in St. Louis in a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly.