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Open Invention Network Calls Out Microsoft
Stony Stevenson writes with news that the head of the Open Invention Network has summarily dismissed Microsoft's claims that Linux violates a number of its patents. Calling the move 'clear FUD', Jerry Rosenthal calls them out by asking for Microsoft to disclose the patents they are worried about. His argument is that if the patents are something to be proud of, if the software giant feels they're sure to succeed in court, there's no need for behind-the-hand namecalling. "Rosenthal believes that, if there are grounds for patent infringement, there would either be easy workarounds or the open source community would find 'prior art' which would invalidate the patent. OIN buys patents on the open market and makes them available to companies royalty free, so long as those companies pledge never to use their own patents to attack open source code.The organisation was set up by IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony and has a war chest of millions of dollars."
"Intellectual property" is a misleading portmanteau of completely separate branches of law: trademarks, copyrights and patents. But the OIN despite the badly worded mission statement concentrates on patents. Specifically its a defensive patent pool (with contributions from Red Hat, Sun, Novell, IBM and others) which can be licensed by any company agreeing not to use its own patents in aggressive lawsuits against pool members.
Currently the three largest licensess are Google, Barracuda and Sun.
David Wheeler has a good overview here
Given the current lamentable state of the patent system the OIN is probably the only way in which some sanity can be established. It must be awkward to be Novell right now having endorsed the OIN on one hand, and also endorsed the existence of Microsoft's Snuffleupagus Patents.