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Red Hat Patenting Around Open Standards
I Believe in Unicorns writes "Red Hat's patent policy says 'In an attempt to protect and promote the open source community, Red Hat has elected to... develop a corresponding portfolio of software patents for defensive purposes. We do so reluctantly...' Meanwhile, USPTO Application #: 20090063418, 'Method and an apparatus to deliver messages between applications,' claims a patent on routing messages using an XQuery match, which is an extension of the 'unencumbered' AMQP protocol that Red Hat is helping to make. Is this a defensive patent, or is Red Hat cynically staking out a software patent claim to an obvious extension of AMQP? Is Red Hat's promise to 'refrain from enforcing the infringed patent' against open source a reliable contract, or a trap for the unwary? Given the Microsoft-Red Hat deal in February, are we seeing Red Hat's 'Novell Moment?'"
Reader Defeat_Globalism contributes a related story about an international research team who conducted experiments to "quantify the ways patent systems and market forces might influence someone to invent and solve intellectual problems." Their conclusion was that a system which doesn't restrict prizes to the winner provides more motivation for innovation.
If the patent systems are to be beaten into submission, and put in their place, it will take many such protective patents. That is to say, patents which are granted but the patent holder never uses against anyone, thus over time forcing the patented issue into the public domain by virtue of failure to enforce it.
There will have to be huge portfolios of these and events such as IBM or other big portfolio holders simply refusing to litigate against anyone. It will get tricky but needs to be done. If IBM et al decided that they would only enforce those that are crucial to their own viability/survival, and not litigate against little guys, it would change how things are done. No matter, it will still be messy till the market settles on what is a 'normal' and 'don't be evil' way of doing things despite what the USPTO or any other might say is legal.
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These kinds of efforts always start out with the best intentions. Then the company gets sold or new management comes on board, money gets tight and it's not long before they're taking another look at monetizing their patent portfolio.
If RedHat was really serious about the patents being defensive, wouldn't it make sense for them to donate them to an open source patent pool?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This would appear to be a 'wolf in sheeps clothing' situation and a very dangerous one. A good idea for anti-patent people (and I have a few of these things and don't like them) is for the eff or somebody to create a easily search-able list of 'good ideas' top protect the ideas from being patented.
To stop commercial exploitation of an idea (like sticking the idea into an operating system thats very popular) thereby effectively banning all other operating systems or companies competing, is a completely different matter, and this is where defensive patents would help, but then you have to decide who can use the tech - and were back at square 1 again - very few people have the mental capacity to decide on this point.
It's not about that. It's about mutually assured destruction. You can sue me, sure, but I can sue you too, so do you really want to start this dance?
If you just posted prior art, all you're doing is protecting stuff that you came up with yourself, and even then, you may still have to prove your prior art in court. It doesn't help in a situation where another company has patented some BS that they claim applies to everything you do.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Offtopic but, am I the only one who finds it ironic, and funny, that a person with the username "Defeat_Globalism" is using the World Wide Web?
Novell agreed that Microsoft had a valid claim that Linux infringed Microsoft patents and paid Microsoft for the use of said (unspecified, undisclosed, vaporware) patents.
Red Hat by contrast did not sign a joint agreement with microsoft but set up co-ordinated support for customers who use either Red Hat guest instances on Microsoft servers or Microsoft guests on Red Hat servers. They explicitly " ... have nothing to do with patents, and there are no patent rights or other open source licensing rights implications provided under these agreements. The agreements contain no financial clauses other than test fees for industry-standard certification and validation."
Microsoft realized that they would be frustrating customers if they did not do this. Red Hat realizes the same thing. Neither Microsoft nor Red Hat conceded anything about patents in this relationship.
The difference between the Novell-Microsoft pact and the current story is so vast that the original post is either a troll or a very confused person.
> That's the key behind defensive patents. Other companies won't want to sue you for patent infringement, because they know that you can respond in kind.
That works till RedHat falls into the wrong hands. If it goes titsup in a bad economy and the receivers sell off its assets to the patent trolls all bets are off.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Mutually-assured destruction worked exactly as intended, in preventing nuclear war for over 50 years. I see no reason why those lessons can't be exported to business... a diplomacy of a different kind.
If Red Hat should ever go after FOSS, their extensive contributions to GPL projects should prevent them from doing anything malicious with these patents.
Though I would worry for those with more permissive licenses, the second that Red Hat contributes a line of code related to this patent to a FOSS project, that should be sufficient to argue that Red Hat placed the patent out for similar free use. I'd say this is more a question of preventing patent trolls from patenting something mind-numbingly obvious.
Of course, placing the patents under a GPL restriction would allow them to enforce the patents against proprietary use. That would be quite a turn.
Not really.
After WWII, the US had several years as the only nuclear-armed nation, and yet didn't attack the Soviet Union.
The US developed the fusion bomb before the USSR, making it the first with the "assured-destruction" scale weapons, where little if any retaliation would have been possible, and yet didn't use that opportunity.
From the 50s through the 60s, the US was pretty well assured that, with a full nuclear first strike, it could almost entirely eliminate the retaliatory threat from the USSR. Again, it didn't happen.
The USSR had to adapt it's nuclear submarine fleet for extended operation under the Arctic polar ice cap just to establish a guaranteed retaliatory capability.
At best, there was about 20 years of MAD.
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