People have asked about the legal dispute between KAM Associates,
Matt Katzer, et al and myself. This post is meant to provide some
more information on that.

For more than a year, Matt Katzer and KAM Associates have accused me
of patent infringement; you can see the correspondence about that at

<http://jmri.sf.net/pp/k/index.html>

I do not believe that I infringe any valid & enforceable claim in
Matt Katzer's patents. KAM disagreed and demanded more than $200,000
in royalties from me. Because this dispute was interfering with my
work, I decided that I needed to ask the courts to decide this via a
"declaratory judgement". You can see the legal document requesting
this at the web page linked above.

So far, this has been a dispute between Matt Katzer et al and myself.
He's accused me (and SourceForge, who hosts our web site, etc) of
infringement, but has not acted against anybody else in the larger
JMRI community. I would prefer that the jmriusers, jmri-developers,
etc, mailing lists _not_ become active parts of this dispute. Those
lists have much more important roles to play in supporting users,
helping to extend the software, etc. Let's keep those lists focused
on the present & future, rather than the past. Besides, I think most
people aren't really interested in this anyway.

There has been some discussion in the larger community about this dispute
(<http://righttocreate.blogspot.com/2006/04/write-free-software-pay-203000-to.ht\
ml>,
<http://lwn.net/Articles/180887/>,
<http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/5! 0117.htm l>,
<http://www.digg.com/technology/Patent_lawyers_tell_free_software_developer_to_p\
ay_$203,000>;
Google will certainly find more).

We have a lot of "prior art", and some of this discussion has been
very helpful in finding even more "prior art" to demonstrate that the
patents are invalid. In the nature of Internet discussions, not all
of the information people have posted is actually correct; people
make mistakes about facts and law, and write more than they actually
know about. But some of the posts have been very inappropriate and
even harmful to the model railroading community. I understand how
people can be angry with Matt Katzer, his attorney Kevin Russell, and
KAM Industries. Unfortunately, some of them have become so angry that
they've been encouraging others to do improper things like attack
KAM's website, send volumes of emails, or encourage others not to do
business with KAM or any businesses that conduct business with KAM.
That's not right. I want to make it clear that I will _not_ be part
of any effort to boycott KAM's products or interfere with its
business.

At its heart, this is a dispute about whether we're going to have
multiple solutions for model railroad software, or whether one party
is going to be allowed to monopolize that. I've spent time and effort
trying to provide software that model railroaders will find useful,
and so has KAM. I think that model railroaders should be able to use
whatever software they want, and I've put my money & time where my
mouth is to help make that possible. If model railroaders prefer
KAM's software, they should be able to use it, just as they should be
able to use JMRI software if they prefer to use that.

In the end, the courts will decide which one of us - I or Matt Katzer
- is right. In the meantime, I ask for your support in making sure
that everyone - including Matt Katzer and KAM - who wants to put out
a product can do so, without having to fear being the target of
attacks, boycotts, or any other unfair conduct.

Thanks,

Bob

--
Bob Jacobsen +1-510-486-7355 fax +1-510-643-8497 AIM, Skype JacobsenRG