Hall agreed to serve pro bono publico (at no charge, for the public benefit), and asked the court for a declaratory judgment that the patent was unenforceable. Katzer responded by bringing a SLAPP suit against Jacobsen. SLAPP is a law that was meant to defend little folks sued by big rich companies, but is increasingly used in just the other direction.

The long running case of Jacobsen v. Katzer has been settled on terms favourable to Jacobsen, a developer of the Java Model Railroad Interface project. The case came about when Katzer incorporated Jacobsen's code into it's proprietary model trail software, after deleting the copyright notices that existed in the code.

As expected, the Jacobsen case has now settled. The settlement was a complete victory for Jacobsen and is great news for the FOSS community. The Jacobsen case was very significant for the FOSS community because it was the first case in the US about the enforcement of open source software licenses.

A long running case of great significance to the legal underpinnings of free and open source/open source software (F/OSS) has just settled on terms favorable to the F/OSS developer.

It's a big win for open source -- or is it? I'm talking about the Jacobsen v. Katzer dispute about open source code violation.

Bruce Perens, a longtime leader in the open source movement, is rarely remiss in speaking his mind on open source matters. Here's how Perens breaks down the key opportunities and challenges for open source in the years to come.

Although some people viewed it as a tempest in a teapot, the long-running legal case Jacobsen v. Katzer stirred up some seminal open source issues. We first reported on the dust-up all the way back in August of 2008, noting that the dispute centered around--of all things--model train software.

Amazon.com has signed a patent agreement with Microsoft over the use of Linux in its Kindle e-readers. In other open source legal news, the Jacobsen v. Katzer model railroad software case was settled, providing precedent for open source developers to seek monetary damages for copyright infringement, says BetaNews.

Many companies could successfully partake in open source projects without adversely affecting their business, according to open source activist Bruce Perens.