Looks like the Antivirus company Trend Micro is trying to be funny with their lawsuit against Barracuda. For those who don’t know who Trend Micro is, it is a company whose main business focus is on Internet content security. Sadly, it just means that they are providers of (software) protection against viruses, spywares and malwares.  Yes, you might not have heard of them. That’s because they aren’t really a major player in the market. And yet, they are suing people like they are one big mean powerful corporation which I am sure a lot of us hate.

It  looks like they are suing Barracuda because they claim that Barracuda is violating their patent by distributing the free and open source antivirus program ClamAV, which in my opinion is stupid. How does it violate their patent if someone else is distributing some other software and that particular software (ClamAV) is meant for gateway and email antivirus scanning in the first place. It looks like they are targetting ClamAV users because they felt that this is a threat to their business. I don’t have any problems with people charging others for some service rendered. If you made an antivirus software and you want to charge someone for it, then by all means, go ahead. However, if someone else comes along and say that they have an antivirus software which is free and you don’t need to pay a cent for it, then if it is done fair and square, I too don’t have any problems with that. So how do you deal with it? You can either create a product which will encourage users to BUY your product or you can sue. Apparently, it seems that Trend Micro is using the (ridiculous) easy way out.

The reason why Barracuda (itself quite a player in the market) doesn’t want to settle (which would be much easier) is because if they settle, they are actually causing problems for other users of open source software. Which makes sense because if one side admits wrong doing if they are distrubuting or using a particular open source software, then everyone else using the same software would be implicated.

Anyway, it looks like Barracuda is fighting back with their own countersuit. I am not too sure about all these law terms and jargons and what not, but  it seems that Barracuda has their own set of software patents obtained from IBM. Let’s hope for the best.

For more information on the lawsuit, please take a look here.