The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), against Cisco Systems, Inc. The lawsuit alleges that Cisco violated the GNU General Public License (GPL) and Lesser General Public License (LGPL) in its distribution of FSF software.

SFLC yesterday announced its cooperation with the LinuxDefenders project of the Open Invention Network (OIN). LinuxDefenders is a program to create defensive patent tools to reduce patent concerns for the Linux and open source community. While LinuxDefenders and OIN do not share SFLC’s goal to eliminate all software patents, SFLC hopes to cooperate with LinuxDefenders on those projects that can help defend Open Source and Free Software from patent threats.

SFLC is pleased to announce that it has received a grant from Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute. SFLC is delighted to work with OSI to provide legal support to Indian institutions seeking, through free exchange of knowledge, to better the lives of people throughout India. Pursuant to the grant, SFLC’s Executive Director, Eben Moglen, and the founding Director of a new SFLC India, Mishi Choudhary, will visit in India this month for a series of activities in support of the Free Software community.

The majority of people who keep up with SFLC via RSS use this “news” RSS feed. We are posting this brief news item to let you know we now have an RSS feed that includes all material of interest from SFLC, including these news items, as well as blog posts, upcoming events, and podcasts. You might consider subscribing to the new “omnibus” feed instead of this news one.

The Software Freedom Law Center is pleased that the Free Software Foundation (a client of SFLC) has announced version 1.3 of the GNU Free Documentation License, which was drafted with SFLC’s assistance. The FSF has published a joint press release with the Wikimedia Foundation and an FAQ.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s decision in the “Bilski” case. In doing so, it could be the first nail in the coffin of what are often called “software patents”. However, the ruling is narrow and does not completely eliminate the vagueness in patent-eligibility that has exacerbated the threat of patents to software freedom.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) and Extreme Networks, Inc., today jointly announced that an agreement has been reached to dismiss the GPL lawsuit filed by SFLC against Extreme Networks on behalf of two principal developers of BusyBox — Erik Andersen and Rob Landley.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS), today published a guide to effective compliance with the GNU General Public License (GPL) and related licenses.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that an agreement has been reached to dismiss the GNU General Public License (GPL) enforcement lawsuit filed by SFLC against Super Micro Computer, Inc. on behalf of two principal developers of BusyBox.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Extreme Networks, Inc. on behalf of its clients, two principal developers of BusyBox, alleging violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL).