Sun Microsystems Singles Out Peer to Patent

Today Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and President of Sun Microsystems, announced on his weblog that part of any eventual proceeds from Sun's patent lawsuit filed against Network Appliance would be donated to Peer to Patent.

Schwartz made the commitment in his October 24 posting as follows:

"In addition to seeking the removal of their products from the marketplace, we will be going after sizable monetary damages. And I am committing that Sun will donate half of those proceeds to the leading institutions promoting free software and patent reform (in specific, The Software Freedom Law Center and the Peer to Patent initiative), and to the legal defense of free software innovators. We will continue to fund the aggressive reexamination of spurious patents used against the community (which we've been doing behind the scenes on behalf of several open source innovators). Whatever's left over will fuel a venture fund fostering innovation in the free software community."

Details on the lawsuit by Netapp against Sun - NetApp CEO's blog posting.  Netapp press release.  CNET.
Details on the countersuit by Sun against Netapp - Sun CEO's blog posting.  CNET.  InternetNews.