Apache Corporation is a company that has been in the news recently. They were recently sued over the patent for some kind of robotic vacuum cleaner. For those of you who don’t know, the patent claimed that all the dust and debris collected in the air could be directed into the robot’s mouth and could be directed into the robot’s throat. The lawsuit was thrown out and the company was awarded $150 million.
It’s a shame that the same company that is doing so much to make the Internet more accessible and usable still has people throwing around false claims about the same patent. It’s not the first time a company has tried to use a patent to sue people (and in some cases have lost completely), but it’s still an example of why patents are inherently bad.
It’s always sad to see companies that have made such strides in the last decade and a half continue to make mistakes and be sued by people who don’t understand the true purpose of a patent. Its really sad when these companies use patents to try and block access to their own servers, which are also used to host websites for other companies.
It looks like Apache corporation has been sued by a bunch of patent trolls who are suing the company for infringing on some of their patents, for example the patent for using the Apache web server as a caching proxy. The company was awarded a temporary restraining order that prevented Apache corporation from using Apache’s web server as a caching proxy, but once the companies found out the patents were invalid they had to remove Apache corporation’s web site.
Apache corporation had to shut down a website because of a patent infringement lawsuit. Now the company’s main argument in court is that their site uses nothing but Apache infrastructure and that Apache doesn’t own any of the patents that are being sued for. In addition, the company’s lawyers are claiming that they have legal precedent to invalidate all of the patents for which Apache is being sued, which is a little silly.
Apache is actually the parent company of the huge PHP, Joomla, and Drupal CMS organizations, which means that in their defense they have to be pretty dumb. It’s also pretty silly that they are claiming that all of the patents for which they are being sued are invalid. Apache is not claiming that they own the patents on which they are being sued. Instead, they are claiming it is their right to protect those patents.
You should check out the new video for the Apache corporation’s recent press conference. It’s pretty cool.
Apache is claiming that the patents for which they are being sued are invalid. This is a pretty standard defensive approach. Often these companies just claim they have a patent that covers a specific technology that they believe has been stolen. This is what the Oracle lawsuit is all about. While it’s true that Oracle was the first to sue Apache, they have not won their case and are attempting to settle instead of fighting.
