IP Innovation LLC has just filed a patent infringement claim against Red Hat and Novell. It was filed October 9, case no. 2:2007cv00447, IP Innovation, LLC et al v. Red Hat Inc. et al, in Texas. Where else? The patent troll magnet state. And now let's play, where's Microsoft?

If you're getting sued for patent infringement, you have a right to know who is really behind the lawsuit, and so does the public. So I started digging up publicly available information. What I found amazed me - so many patent plaintiffs, especially in the Eastern District of Texas, make no products, and just try to extract money out of their IP.

Can you believe it? This is so great!! Morrison & Foerster are representing TomTom in a new patent infringement lawsuit TomTom has just filed against Microsoft! I love covering their cases. Patent law is usually soooo boring to me, but these guys will keep me awake, and no doubt if I pay attention, I'll learn a lot.

"Ballad of the Patent Troll" - video criticising the likes of Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's patent troll

The two companies in red defended themselves against a Microsoft-associated patent troll, but details about the trial remain limited even after its conclusion; no statement from Novell yet

Is the open-source community stealing ideas from commercial vendors? IP Innovations seems to think so; the patent-holding company recently filed a lawsuit for patent infringement against Linux distributors Red Hat and Novell, claiming that Linux uses ideas originally developed at the Xerox PARC laboratory.

It turns out there were two patent cases filed by the Niro Scavone firm on Wednesday in West Palm Beach, Florida. The first was the Scott Harris/James Parker case I wrote about yesterday. The second was none other than the Global Patent Holdings JPEG patent! Adam Heffner again acted as local counsel to Ray Niro. Interestingly, all 7 defendants are Florida corporations. Is Acacia preparing for patent reform by filing in jurisdictions that make sense? Are they planning to sue more companies, in more of the 94 judicial districts?

You may have read in News Picks recently that Sun won a partial stay in the NetApp patent lawsuit over ZFS, according to IP Law 360:A judge has partly stayed software company Network Appliance Inc.'s patent lawsuit against rival Sun Microsystems Inc. over Sun's ZFS technology, pending the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's re-examination of one of the patents in the suit.

"Back in 2007, IP Innovation filed a lawsuit against Red Hat and Novell. IP Innovation is a subsidiary of Acacia Technologies. You may have heard of them — they're reported to be the most litigious patent troll in the USA