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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."
As soon as I sign up for this one, the only type of insurance plan that I will need which I don't already have will be insurance fraud insurance... and insurance fraud insurance insurance - just to be on the safe side.
I have 1 million monkeys on a million year contract to make me a better sig.
Dosen't anyone suspect that these patent releases could be somehow used against FOSS, in some way? I mean, even though IBM and Sun seem to like it now, who knows what dastardly plans lie just out of sight?
Sun released the patents only under their Creative OSI-approved license. The rest of the open source software, including GNU-based or MPL-based, is still in the air.
This creates the precedent to have open source GNU-based programs that violate the patents and Creative-based programs that are perfectly legal.
It certainly seems like a smart thing to do from Sun's point of view (trying to attract open source developers to their license scheme by giving access to software patents).
If people start to feel like IP insurance is something [i]necessary[/i] to participate in open source, Microsoft has already won
I suppose that lawyers are some kind of new predator on the food chain that's just a part of life now?
"Hey Johnny, don't think about anything without your IP insurance, never know when you might get jumped by a pack of lawyers."
Granted, I realize that insurance has always worked like this on the legal side, especially with Auto and Property insurance, but this is going a little too far don't you think?
All your base are belong to Google.
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.
They don't really care about open source.
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; they try to pretend that the Solaris open source thing is just something they should have done a long time ago, and Solaris will soon get all the benefits of open source community Linux has. As if open source is some kind of magical pixie dust that you sprinkle on software and bam! It's successful!
In reality what is happening is that the GNU operating environment and the Linux operating system beat Sun in the marketplace fair and square-- not because of some "open source" magical pixie dust, but because it's a better product-- and Sun knows this.
The reason Microsoft can never beat Linux is because they believe they're competing with RedHat when in truth they are competing with the GPL. You can't compete with the body of GPLed software the way you compete with a company; it isn't a single organization, it's millions of autonomous people working in concert. Knock out Redhat, something indistinguishable will rise up to take its place.
Sun has finally figured out how to compete with this. Instead of targeting a company, they've declared war on the GPL itself. For awhile they did quite a lot of laying groundwork by running around telling people that GPL is full of IP flaws and in the future you'll need patents to operate in the software industry. Now they're trying to push out a huge body of work under an open source license which has no particular distinguishing features except that it's incompatible with the GPL, and offered as candy all these patents to "open source projects" while conspicuously not offering any sort of protection to the GPL. Sun recognizes that the threat to them at this point isn't Linux the software program, it's the community; and that as long as the community remains solid, directed and internally compatible, they can't defeat it. So they're trying to splinter the community. And this may work.
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 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.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
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
IMHO, insurance is futile, you are better off hiring the best legal help you can find. If you are doing something that important you should consult with an IP law specialists about protecting your IP before you even start the project. Contrary to what most people believe the top law firms do a lot of pro bono work and are open to flexible payment arrangements. As someone with quite a bit of experience in the world of IP protection (I mean legal, not just firewalls), I can recommend the following law firms for IP protection pertaining to software, e-commerce and the Internet in general:
For further details on those law firms check out the largest 250 law firms in the U.S. Oh and I am in no way affiliated with any of those firms, of course.
"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.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
http://www.ip-wars.net/story/2005/1/7/143919/5252
-- TWZ
So software developers and publishers are able to purchase insurance against certain software patent infringements, and for purposes of this comment, we'll assume that's all well and good.
Thing is, it would appear that songwriters and music publishers would need an analogous form of insurance against copyright infringement claims, given that there exist a finite number of distinct melodies in the Western musical scale, and incumbent publishers like to sue startups for subconscious copying ( Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music ). Has any company announced plans to offer this kind of insurance?
Offering insurance against softwarepatents is difficult. Ian Lewis of Miller Insurance company said at the Brussels' FFII conference that a company lost 3000 times the premium. For every pound premium it received, it had to pay out 3000 pounds.(74th minute)