A company by the name of IP Innovation LLC, a subsidiary of subsidiary of a company called Acacia (a well known patent troll) has filed suit against Linux vendors Red Hat and Novell.

The patent is for a “User interface with multiple workspaces for sharing display system objects”, something that existed in prior art and is obvious.

FWIW, Acacia also holds a patent on the “desktop”, no kidding, they just got Apple to pay money.

The recent supreme court cases which restricted patent remedies should make this interesting. Because Acacia is a patent troll, there is no damage that cannot be made right, and so there is no cause for an injunction, and here is a big surprise:

And Acacia has taken on a couple of former Microsoft employees in recent months, including Brad Brunell, who was general manager of intellectual property licensing at Microsoft until he joined IP Innovation on 1 October — just eight days before the suit was filed

So much like SCO, Microsoft’s FUD hands are all over this.