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Linux Violates 283 Patents, says Insurance Company
Apro+im writes "According to this article over at ZDNet:
'Linux potentially infringes 283 patents, including 27 held by Microsoft but none that have been validated by court judgments, according to a group that sells insurance to protect those using or selling Linux against intellectual-property litigation.'
Dan Ravicher, founder and executive director of the Public Patent Foundation, conducted the analysis for Open Source Risk Management. OSRM is like an insurance company, selling legal protection against Linux copyright-infringement claims. It plans to expand the program to patent protections."
That most of the code was written in Europe BEFORE we had software patents.
There is some question about whether Microsoft has an explicit strategy of using patents as a weapon against open source.
Seriously - can anyone think of the kind of thing that anyone could have patented? Disk I/O? Threading?
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The problem with Linux is that there is no one organization with sufficient stake to specifically pursue such a strategy. Though I'm sure if push came to shove, IBM would be willing to use its patent arsenal in defense of its Linux-using customers, given how much they've invested in Linux deployments and Linux-based services work. Anyway, of course it's in this insurance company's interest to point out every possibly infringing instance.
Sounds like a protection racket, to me.
~*~ Tara
That number may seem high, until you remember that everything under the sun (and probably the sun, too) is patented nowadays. How do the following sound (pulling descriptions out of my hat for now):
"Method for temporarily moving unused memory pages to a storage device"
"Method of embedding networking functionality in a kernel"
"Method of using a code fragment at boot time to load an operating system"
"Display of a penguin-shaped image overlapping computer startup messages"
Sound anything like what "Linux" does? Too bad, someone else thought of it "first"...
Of course it's a publicity stunt. Their whole business is dependent upon anti-Linux FUD. If PHBs believe this crap, as well as the junk they see in the press from SCO, they start thinking about who'll take the fall when they get sued for using Linux. Nevermind that it won't happen. If that particular PHB is the one that might get fired, he just might start trying to convince his own PHB that thy need Linux insurance.
It's like selling earthquake insurance to a farmer in Indiana.
The article didn't mention it, but are the potential violations in kernel-land, or do they also entend into user-land and ``Linux'' is being used in the broad sense of the term?
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
Namely, insinuate that Linux is somehow more "unsafe" because it is not controlled by a good old American-as-apple-pie capitalistic company whose sole reason for existing is profit motive. If it isn't made to make money, it isn't legitimate (and, if you're Scott McCollum, is probably an Al-Qaeda plot against the nation). Nevertheless, the idea is to engender an attitude of danger and trepidation toward the decision to move away from proprietary software.
This also underlies the whole "indemnification" dog-and-pony show. Why does only Linux need to be indemnified against copyright infringement? Why is there no one calling for people to indemnify Windows, even though Windows can potentially have more untraceable copyright-violating code? The answer: Windows is assumed to ipso facto contain no such code because it is made by Microsoft, a trusted company which is believed to only employ legitimate business practices also ipso facto.
I'm not sure who benefits here. I get the vibe that it's just an aura of "perceived safety by following the procedures".
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Forbes has a rather more critical article about this.
Since source code has been ruled as expressive speech, do software patents mean speech is patentable? Or will the stack collapse from that end?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
So, when Foo Corp claims that by using Linux you are infringing their patents you simply remain noncommittal (just as you should never accept blame at a car accident) and call OSRM. If OSRM is as good as my car insurer that's pretty much the end of the matter as far as you are concerned. They deal with Foo Corp and their lawyers and resolve the issue as best they can, whether that be getting the case dismissed or negotiating and paying your license fees. You'll probably get a letter every now and then letting you know of any developments, requesting information they might need and so on, but that's all. For many CTOs paying a company like OSRM some money each year might just be worth the removal of one less thing to fret and loose sleep over.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
They know that the majority of cases will be invalid and won't make it to court. The only thing they need is fear just like other insurance compaines need the fear of death/illness/fire/accident....
If they blow up a few figures to create that fear they may get more business.
Dude...you're living in a dream world if you think linux doesn't violate any patents. How long have you been reading slashdot? There's been all sorts of articles about "Microsoft granted patent on double click" or that sorta thing. I'm quite confident that linux violates quite a few patents, though I've never done a search myself. I'm also quite confident that MS Windows violates quite a few patents (they're in some law suits now about it).
"They know Linux doesn't violate any patents. If this were not the case, providing such insurance would be a terrible idea "
Do you think car insurance companies provide insurance knowing that people don't get into accidents? No, the idea is that the majority of people who are paying for the insurance will not need it, but having that insurance will help them secure support within the company for migrating to linux. Both companies benefit from linux insurance. This is especially true considering that, if I get sued over patents for using a commercial product, such as windows or oracle or something, you can bet that the creator of those products would step forward and help me defend myself. With linux there is no one to do that, unless you're subscribing to a particular distribution that might or might not have the money for it. This is why larger companies don't need insurance for running commercial software, but it's quite helpful when running open source software.
I welcome the option of getting insurance for running open source software, as the major effect it'll have is to encourage big business to switch.
Starting to sound like Open Source Fear Mongering to me.
You have to look at it from an insurance company's perspective. They provide insurance for things that go wrong. Sometimes the product is something commonly asked for (hey, can you insure my boat that runs on nitroglycerine?). Sometimes insurance companies come up with a product on their own and market it (hey, we'll sell you meteor impact insurance). In either case before they can tell if the product is viable is to set a good price for it. To set a good price for it, they have to study the market - find out what risks there are. Once they decide what chance the bad outcomes have, and how much they would cost, they can come up with a price for the insurance. After that they add a little onto the top for their own pockets and some fudge factor. Finally they can come around and say, "look, we see you have this problem with patent suits and we can insure it for 38 dollars a month" or whatever. So just because they come to the table with this does not automatically mean that it is a bad idea - in fact I think it can be used to cheaply get out of the bind of software lawsuits by big companies against little guy developers. They probably think the same thing, along with other markets as well. Sure you need to shell out some money. Sure, if everyone got together and just paid for lawsuit costs together it would be slightly cheaper. But since other people giving you money out of the goodness of their heart isn't a sure way to foot legal bills, a small premium isn't so bad. This article is a solution not a problem.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
If the code was written before software patents were officially acceptable, then Linux coders could argue that extending patent protection now to companies like Microsoft would be in violation of the Constitution's anti-ex post facto clause.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
The situation that it could come back to "shoot them in the foot" is when they attempt to defend their customer against a patent infringement suit. The plaintiff's will point to their own in house documents that admin Linux is violating patents. Of course there is no risk if the insurance company knows it is BS!
- Try to enforce the patent. Doing this risks having the patent invalidated, losing one of their trading cards. And the best they could hope for is to collect a little money until a workaround is found.
- Follow suit and release the patent for uses in Linux. Sure you won't make money off this, but you could still trade the patent with other companies for use of their patents.
The one fly in the ointment is any company (*cough*Microsoft*cough) that has a vested interest in seeing Linux fail. They might be willing to sacrifice some of their patent portfolio in order to make that happen. It also makes them number one on the patent examination hit parade.===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
I foresee something not unlike a protection racket here. If they're saying "buy our 'insurance' in case someone sues you for using Linux which (says we) violates any number of patents" and then they goad putative patent holders into suing - anything that "tips" a Microsoft or someone else with an army of thug^H^H^H^Hlawyers, then it sounds like protection to me. RICO, anyone?
It is almost certain that for any random 10 lines of code you pick -- in any software program -- there is going to be some sort of patent-violation, because there's so many patents in software, the vast majority of them for ridiculous things.
How many patent violations are there in proprietary code, violations that no-one can see, due to the closed nature of the code?
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
According to them, those patents should already be enforceable today, but the law is not interpreted the same everywhere. So they want to harmonise it and make sure that software patents are enforceable everywhere in Europe, except pretty much only in the UK as it is until now (they never mention this last part obviously).
Of course, our (FFII's) position is that until now, those patents are generally not enforceable, in the UK they interpret the European Patent Convention in a completely ass-backwards way (just like the Commission/Council) and when you force all of Europe to accept the UK's case law then this is not just some formal "harmonisation".
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Of course they won't point a single line of code. They'll wait more then a year and try to show something. And, of course, it will be so insane that it nobody will care.
The point here is that OSRM can't just point out every line of code that has copyright issues because they will have to pay if companies get sued. They need to show that it has copyright issues so they can capt clients, but can't show too much or the issues.
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I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
They just haven't done the research yet. Patents are often used in a defensive manner in the industry.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
One the other hand insurance companies have the conflict of interest in that exaggerating the risks of open source software has a positive effect on their bottom line thereby discouraging the adoption of open source software.