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.

Comments

I'm not a prognosticator, but....

[zappepcs]

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.

It always starts out with good intentions

[HangingChad]

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?

Re:Defensive Patents

[dirvine]

Why not simply publish the spec in wikipedia and as many lists as possible (including your own web site). Prior art == defense in patent land, or at least it is supposed to.

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.