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Tuesday, December 9, 2008
We must protect Linux
Complete article:
http://legalpad.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/12/08/a-no-fly-zone-to-protect-linux-from-patent-trolls/
Until now, OIN’s purpose has been one-dimensional: to acquire a defensive portfolio of strategically crucial patents, which OIN makes available, royalty free, to any company that reciprocally agrees not to assert any of its own patents against the Linux community. (About 50 companies have already entered into such formal agreements with OIN, of which the best known are probably Google (GOOG) and Oracle (ORCL).) The implicit threat is that if any outsider — a Microsoft, (MSFT) say, which declared publicly in May 2007 that open-source software then violated 235 of its patents — were to ever bring a patent suit against a player in the Linux community, that outsider would, in turn, risk countersuit by OIN or its member companies asserting infringement of their own patents by the outsider.
While this IP-acquisition program remains a central one for OIN, Bergelt says, OIN will also now seek to “think more creatively” about other ways to protect and foster Linux’s development by means of “relationship-building” and “information-sharing,” including efforts to explain the importance of open-source and open-platform approaches to the media, patent officials, and competition authorities, among others.
http://legalpad.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/12/08/a-no-fly-zone-to-protect-linux-from-patent-trolls/
Until now, OIN’s purpose has been one-dimensional: to acquire a defensive portfolio of strategically crucial patents, which OIN makes available, royalty free, to any company that reciprocally agrees not to assert any of its own patents against the Linux community. (About 50 companies have already entered into such formal agreements with OIN, of which the best known are probably Google (GOOG) and Oracle (ORCL).) The implicit threat is that if any outsider — a Microsoft, (MSFT) say, which declared publicly in May 2007 that open-source software then violated 235 of its patents — were to ever bring a patent suit against a player in the Linux community, that outsider would, in turn, risk countersuit by OIN or its member companies asserting infringement of their own patents by the outsider.
While this IP-acquisition program remains a central one for OIN, Bergelt says, OIN will also now seek to “think more creatively” about other ways to protect and foster Linux’s development by means of “relationship-building” and “information-sharing,” including efforts to explain the importance of open-source and open-platform approaches to the media, patent officials, and competition authorities, among others.
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