IP Insurance For Software

isn't my name writes "We all know that OSRM has come out to offer insurance against intellectual property claims for open source software. Recently, we've seen IBM open up 500 patents and SUN up the ante with 1600. But all of these moves are targeted at F/OSS software. There's an article at IPW that looks at the state of patent insurance for non-F/OSS."

Comments

FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

If people start to feel like IP insurance is something [i]necessary[/i] to participate in open source, Microsoft has already won

Patent infringement coverage

[freralqqvba]

It is truely a sad day when, "Patent infringement coverage is needed by anyone involved in the software business, whether it is proprietary or open source." The courrupt payoff from a courrupt system. Patents were never intended to be used in this manner. If something was worthy to be pantented it should have been innovative enough such that no one else would, for the duration of the patent, indenpendently develop the same product. The only time "patent infringement coverage" would be needed then, is when either a member of the team gets lazy and copies some source, or the idea is indenpendently developed, exposing that the patent being infringed upon was insufficent to be patented in the first place - patents such as 'mouse clicking' and 'a method of interacting with electronic devices' come to mind. Hopefully those in power will some day stop shelling out to corporate interests and actually move the system back into doing what it was intended to do. Unill then, at least there's Poland.

Wrong solution - need better laws

[iamacat]

Legitimate patent licensing for non-free software doesn't cripple the product unless it's trying to just rip off other people's work without adding extra value. Office supplies companies don't buy patent insurance - they just pay 3 cents a piece for items they ship. If royalties are too steep, there is an option to ask government for compulsory licensing. That is rarely used, but patent owners know it's there and generally negotiate based on value of their invention.

Instead of wasting money on insurance, concerned companies should pool funds for lobbying to reform patent and civil litigation laws.

The culprit = The USPTO

[popo]

The culprit here is the USPTO. The ease of getting a patent approved by the USPTO is shockingly easy. (I'm sure that comment will get me flamed by all the patent-lawyers reading this). But patents should be above all things: extremely rare.

Innovation occurs in parallel. Period.

Its almost time for a class action suit against the USPTO.

Sun did not open 1600 patents....

[LnxAddct]

Those 1600 patents can only be used to contribute to OpenSolaris or related projects, all of which must also be licensed under the CDDL. I'd hardly call that open, especially considering that they can't even be used in conjunction with the linux kernel (a.k.a one of the largest open source projects alive)
Regards,
Steve

Re:SUN is declaring war on the GPL

[iamacat]

If you listen to their PR people they claim that "the whole Linux thing" "wouldn't have happened" if they'd open soured Solaris ten years ago

Well, if they open sourced x86 Solaris before Linux was written and it was usable on Linus'es x86 box, he sure wouldn't have written another kernel. His original motivation was that Minix sucked and Andy Tanenbaum didn't want to do anything about that. If his OS didn't suck, he would just work on some other projects. Did you see him re-write compiler, editor or a UNIX shell when there were usable existing GNU tools?

Of course

[Pan T. Hose]

"We all know that OSRM has come out to offer insurance against intellectual property claims for open source software. Recently, we've seen IBM open up 500 patents and SUN up the ante with 1600. But all of these moves are targeted at F/OSS software."

Of course those are targetted at free software, because free software is the main force opposing software patents. Check out who is giving their patents to free software, and then check out who is the main pusher of software patents in EU. What we have to realise is that IBM is not giving us patents just because IBM is nice. IBM wants us to shut up while it is lobbying for software patents in the European Union. Hopefully, we are not fools, and we will see the big picture and understand that it is harmful in the long run. And quite frankly it is harmful for both proprietary and free software developers. It is dangerous for anyone who cannot afford an army of lawyers. IBM will be safe with its proprietary software and with its free software, but your mom and pop's software shop will be always vulnerable. Please people, let's not wet our pants because IBM gave us some miserable patents to keep us quiet. Anyone who remembers WW2 knows that this is hardly a company that does not evil, like Google. Let's wait and see what those patents will give us in the countries that have software patents, and meanwhile lobby against such patents in the countries that don't, as hard as we possibly can. It's also a good idea to sign the Thank you, Poland letter to show our support. There is more info on FSF website. The politicians have to know what we want, and they will do what we want, because they want to get reelected. This is the most important thing to understand in politics. "Hey, look, we've got 50000 letters from around the world from people who are strongly against software patents. We'll have have a lot of support and good publicity if we vote against software patents. Screw IBM." This is how it works, folks. It's time to learn it and it's time to start acting. Don't even waste your time on reading those patents, just lobby against them even if those particular patents are ours (with strings attached, of course), because it doesn't mean that we'll get every IBM's and Sun's patents in the future, and the future is what we need to worry about.