In this article, open source heavyweight Bruce Perens explains the complications resulting from a lawsuit between Red Hat and Acacia. Acacia had sued Red Hat for violating a patent on the object-relational database paradigm, which allows developers to access databases without writing any SQL. The two companies announced that they reached a settlement in the case, but no one ever said what that settlement involved.

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Perens thinks it likely that the case is sealed. Unfortunately, that means no one knows if Red Hat paid a license or not. If it did, it could leave JBoss developers and other open source project owners at a higher risk of patent lawsuits.View article