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Five Linux Companies Buy Software Patents

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the giving-back dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In order to protect themselves against patent grabbing 'trolls,' major Linux companies are buying software patents through a nonprofit company called Open Invention Network. This nonprofit company will then offer royalty-free licenses to companies and individuals that agreed not to assert their own patents."

5 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Do you have to have patents to join? by RandoX · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Or can you agree not to assert future patents?

  2. Maybe necessary by external400kdiskette · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Whilst frivolous patent are inherently bad and shows the system doesn't work in the real world it might be a necessary defence to avoid future legal problems. So just hope they can stay non-profit :)

  3. Patents are not a defence by Gopal.V · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Mutually assured destruction with patents work when the other company you are dealing with is a technology company shipping real software which could violate one of your own. It just doesn't work when you are dealing with the modern lawyer companies which hold patents merely to sue the pants off the big/little/ guy who comes under their sights

    IBM, Sony, Phillips and Novell aren't really Linux companies - they know that Free/Open/Libre software is the only way they are going to utilize the vastly under-utilized creative urges of the hackers of the world to fight their own enemies. GNU/Linux is just a primary weapon in their arsenal and they just want to keep it sharp.

    Even more sadly, the more we use patents to fight patents, the less backing the fight against software patents is going to get. To quote:
    They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither.
    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
    1. Re:Patents are not a defence by xigxag · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ^ True, but this may accomplish two things:

      1) Keep the alliance members in bed with one other, similar to the way that royal families throughout time have used marriage bonds to create extended relationships and maintain peace among kingdoms.

      2) Dissuade Microsoft from exercising its "nuclear option" in a desperate measure to fend off the rise of Linux.

      --
      There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
  4. Not an effective counter to threat of swpats by Sanity · · Score: 2, Insightful
    What about all the non-linux open source projects, or the small companies that create innovative closed-source software?

    Additionally, patent trolls are immune to this kind of patent pool since they tend not to create any software themselves and are therefore not vulnerable to software patents.

    The real fix here is to wrestle the patent system back from the "intellectual property maximalists" and get rid of patents on software which do not motivate innovation (just try to name one useful innovation in software we wouldn't have were it not for software patents - they are occasionally a by-product of innovation, but never a motivator for it).