FireStar patent claim could affect other companies as well Red Hat faces a patent infringement lawsuit this week over an application that came under its wing as a result of its acquisition of JBoss.FireStar Software, based in Boxborough, Massachusetts, alleges that the Hibernate 3.0 software infringes on a patent issued in August 2000. The patent suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, concerns technology involving mapping between an object model and a relational database.Hibernate 3.0, a persistence engine, is a component of the JBoss Enterprise Middleware System. FireStar is seeking unspecified damages. The patent claim could potentially have an effect beyond Red Hat, wrote Florian Mueller, a leading activist against software patents.“It seems to me that the FireStar patent is quite broad, and if it is upheld, it will affect other companies as well,” Mueller wrote in a blog posting on Thursday.Red Hat, which distributes a version of Linux, announced it would buy JBoss for $350 million in April, adding the strong open-source middleware vendor to its portfolio. A Red Hat spokeswoman said Thursday the company is aware of the suit, but had no further comment. FireStar could not immediately be reached. SecurityTechnology IndustryCareers