Fairytale for 2019: GNOME to battle a patent troll in court

Nicole ReddyNews

Linux darling faces the lawyers over Shotwell shenanigans

The GNOME Foundation, maker of the eponymous Linux desktop, has been hit with a sueball over how its Shotwell photo manager, er, manages photos.

The plaintiff, Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC, has alleged in a complaint filed at the United States District Court Northern California that defendant, GNOME Foundation, has infringed its patent for a “Wireless image distribution system and method”.

The patent, 9,936,086, filed at the US Patent and Trademark Office on 2 June 2017, is dated 3 April 2018 and, in a nutshell, is concerned with flinging digital photos from one device to another wirelessly.

Rothschild, which has a virtual office in Texas, has been busy with its new toy and has also slapped Magix with a complaint regarding the same patent. In Magix’s case, it is the company’s Photo Manager that has attracted the ire of Rothschild’s lawyers.

Unlike Magix, GNOME is a non-profit outfit. The Foundation’s Executive Director, Neil McGovern, described the suit as “baseless” and said that the organisation would “vigorously defend against” it.

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