TomTom & Microsoft Settle…”ensures TomTom’s full compliance…under the GPLv2″

“Horacio Gutierrez, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and
deputy general counsel of intellectual property and licensing, said
in a statement that he is pleased TomTom chose to resolve the
matter out of court and that many companies already license the
patents in question, including companies that create products
containing both open-source and proprietary code.

“Blech. That’s the pitch. But then Microsoft statements are
always framed as “wins”, so far as I’ve noticed.

“Ars Technica sees this difference between TomTom’s and Novell’s
deals:

“TomTom will, however, remove the functionality that is covered
under the FAT patents. This will guarantee that the code in
TomTom’s Linux kernel can continue to be broadly redistributed
downstream under the GPL without patent encumbrances. This aspect
of the agreement, along with specificity about which patents are
infringed, are major factors that differentiate this agreement from
Microsoft’s controversial deal with Novell.”

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