---
title: Patently Obvious
osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/conferences/seagl2020/program/proposals/731
beginning: '2020-11-13T10:10:00.000-08:00'
end: '2020-11-13T10:40:00.000-08:00'
resources:
  internet_archive_identifier: SeaGL2020-Neil_McGovern-Patently_Obvious
presenters:
- name: Neil McGovern
  affiliation: GNOME Foundation
  osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/users/733
  gravatar_id: c8acafd6fc0117e54a3f524f23127b4d
  biography: A long-term contributor to free software, Neil McGovern has held posts
    on the boards of Software in the Public Interest, Open Rights Group and served
    a term as the Debian Project Leader. Neil currently works as the Executive Director
    of the GNOME Foundation.
---

In August 2019, GNOME was notified that it was being sued in the state of California over a broad patent which allegedly covered Shotwell, a photo management application. The plaintiff? A prolific filer of patent suits, and a patent assertion entity. This was the first time that a FOSS project has been sued for patent infringement.

This talk is the story from the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation, on how he responded and the strategies taken to not only defeat the suit, but to secure a ground-breaking agreement which means that this particular PAE will never be able to sue any FOSS project ever again.
