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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."

1 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. A Tale of Two Dudes by smittyoneeach · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Dude A is a MicroSoft sales rep. He was foaming at the mouth about new workflow solutions pouring out of Redmond. I asserted that there haven't be any new ideas in computer science in decades; the real issues are organizational, not technical.
    Dude A loudly protested that there was constant innovation.
    So I asked Dude B, who is among the hardest-core propeller-heads I've ever met. Dude B thought that packet switched networks were probably the last genuinely new idea.
    Clearly, as a working stiff, I have no idea about these things. The fact that the PTO keeps puking new patents for these ideas must mean that there is some basis for them, no?

    --
    Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear