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Linux Patent Protection Network Lures Facebook, HP
jbrodkin writes "Facebook, HP, Rackspace, Juniper, Fujitsu and dozens of other organizations have joined a group building a defensive patent portfolio to protect Linux-using members from potential lawsuits. The Open Invention Network (OIN) — founded in 2005 by IBM, NEC, Novell, Phillips, Red Hat and Sony — has acquired 300 Linux-related patents and licenses to 2,000 in total in a bid to protect the Linux community from intellectual property lawsuits. The group added 74 new members this year and is giving a leadership role to Google, which is fighting lawsuits targeting Linux-based Android."
SCEA has it.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Sony is in the list ??? linux is doomed !!
When so many cronies get behind linux, all the cronies in your office won't mind using it.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Sorry if I'm rude but, what the fuck is Sony doing there??
And how do we know that they're not simply joining up to see what others have there, to make it easier for them to win IP lawsuits?
Ideas like these are IMHO always bad. Sooner or later, every company or organization goes under, and when it does, the assets are sold. To someone who won't have to follow the original intents and promises, like a patent troll.
Promises are worth exactly as much as the paper they aren't written on.
What's the N for? Is it for "nigger"?
AC.
What a funny parody of a stupid USA:ian racist free market loon. You're not for real are you?
You're just too good to be true.
Defensive patents are just a way that companies agree to break the law together. I would much rather see the companies agree to CHANGE the law together. Like, for example, shorten the patent lifespan, or how about, make trivial ideas unpatentable?
The day you stop being a racist troll.
I'll tell you what, I'll personally convince Obama to break up this patent pool as soon as you learn the meaning of the following terms:
abuse
dominant
free market
cartel
criminal
attack
The company that has spent so much time taking from Linux and then leaving it dry? Google is too busy to commit changes back from Android, and they're all-to comfortable keeping Honeycomb (Android 3.0) closed source.
Billy:It's a symptom. You're treating a symptom, and the disease rages on, consumes the human race. The fish rots from the head, as they say. So my thinking is, why not cut off the head?
Penny: Of the human race?
Billy: It's not a perfect metaphor, but I'm talking about an overhaul of the system.
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
So in 6 years they have acquired 2000 patents. Microsoft filed 3.7K last year, IBM filed over 5k and Samsung did over 4.5K.
I'm under impressed. Seems like a pretty small pool compared to everybody else out there.
I just tried 11.04 and that desktop ... lulz
what a feckin twat
and once again we are reminded why software patents need to go the way of the dodo bird.
WTF is a loaded word like "lures" doing in the title? Has Taco decided to outsource headline-writing to Steve Ballmer and/or Faux Nooz?
Aside from the irony of the OIN's raison d'etre (though like it or not, the current legal system is what it is): the patent pool only applies to a fairly specific definition of a "Linux system".
Case in point, both Google and Oracle are both members...
Don't get me wrong, I think the OIN is a sound initiative. However it's seems very naive to brush over its limitations.
Nincompoop. DUH.
Tisk tisk only a racist would automatically associate N with nigger.
This is an honest question, does this give the patent holders control over the future direction of Linux? ie. patent holders have ability to sue for patent infringement if there's something they don't like or it doesn't go the direction they want?
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
These days, any company or software project without a portfolio of defensive patents to defend itself with is just lawsuit bait. The second you get any success, it's just a matter of time before the crippling patent lawsuits come. It's ironic that patents, which were created to *promote* innovation, have become a weapon that now *stifles* innovation.
An successful indie software developer with no patents is like a meekly 12-year-old walking through Compton with a "I have a lot of cash in my wallet" sign on his back.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
attack and undermine the most successful American companies
You paint it as a foreign attack. Umm, let's see what we have here:
- Hewlett-Packard: American, headquartered at Palo Alto, CA
- IBM: American, headquartered at Armonk, New York (Trivia: HAL of 2001: Space Odyssey was named by transposing IBM one letter back through the alphabet)
- Intel: American, headquartered at Santa Clara, CA
- Google: American, headquartered at Mountain View, CA
- NEC: Japanese
- Novell: multinational, headquartered at Waltham, Massachusetts
- Red Hat: American, headquartered at Raleigh, North Carolina
Are we seeing a pattern here? It's not like the US as a whole has anything to lose out of this, given that both the "attackers" and the "defenders" are American...
forming a CARTEL against Microsoft and Apple to try to destroy them using patents rather than competing with products that people, you know, actually want to buy
Again, let's see what we have here.
Apple is suing Samsung for the Galaxy series of Android-powered phones. Reason: they look too much like the iPhone. This didn't come as much of a surprise to me after seeing the Galaxy S, Galaxy S Mk.II and the still Samsung-made Nexus S trounce the iPhone in reviews.
Microsoft was trounced long ago by Apple in the smartphone market, after they failed to make a snappy comeback to the iPhone Mk.I. Windows Phone 7 came too late and just doesn't cut it in the face of Android and iOS together.
And neither one is better than the other, for using patents equally frivolously to make attacks on one another and stifle competition, in your analogy, by being cartels unto themselves by virtue of their sheer size. In this regard, they deserve to have the book thrown at them using one of IBM's patents: they patented patents! It doesn't get any better than this, you gotta admit that...
forming a CARTEL
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
FYI: "A cartel is a formal (explicit) agreement among competing firms. It is a formal organization of producers and manufacturers that agree to fix prices, marketing, and production.", according to Arthur Sullivan and Steven M. Sheffrin. The OIN is an association to pool patents, and protect one another from abuse. I see no evidence of fixing prices, marketing strategy or production strategy here. What I see is that now, instead of the Microsoft/Apple ogres going up against several dwarves, they get to face a single ogre trumping them in size, given that the strength of an IT company these days is measured by the number of patents it owns, no matter how frivolous they are.
When will N-Obama stand up against this kind of market abuse?
He won't. Simply because it's not his job. According to the Constitution of the United States of America (I dare you to find a higher law than that in the States!),
"The Congress shall have Power [...] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
I think the IT trade pretty much fits those two criteria, even if it's not actually commerce, nor "market abuse" the way you paint it. Regardless, if it's market, the Congress will regulate, not the President.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
This only works against corporate lawyers trying to justify their jobs. Against a licensing company it wouldn't have any effect since they don't produce anything. Sure you might go after the people behind it but it's far too easy to hide. Nowadays companies don't really hold their own patents anyway, they transfer them to a licensing company overseas to avoid higher income taxes. Those holding companies are the real company while the brands are just mules. Big companies are doing this automatically to limit negative publicity from suing other companies.
----
The only real solution is to junk the current patent system and replace it with a merit system. Far, far, far more money would be produced in all involved economies. But it's the bread and butter of lawyers and that's the fallback job of at least a third of politicians and judges.
Patents are suppose to inspire innovation. If we replaced the current system with a board of experts that can describe products and solutions that are needed then we would have a solution (pun intended). Further don't have fixed patent terms, let them be longer and shorter and base them on the merit of the challenge and what resources were spent and risked to develop them. And don't let them be transferred and for the most part put them in the name of a person and not a corporation. Think of it as X prizes for innovation. And for the most part it should be the panels coming up with problems to be rewarded. There should be safeguards against lobbying the patent board to invent problems for an already developed weak solutions.
Such a board should have broad powers that aren't easily overruled by any court. If fact they should be able to revise their patents awards such as by lengthening or shortening patent periods. And they should be able to set prices and limits for licensing.
It should be an organization the size of the pentagon and it should be international because business and research is international.
So without a pack of patents so one can use MAD as a defense you can not innovate in the consumer electronics and software space. If you do too well someone will come after you. Can someone please just kill software patents today. Of course this could be good for FOSS but probably terrible for everybody else. Notice that Apple now is claiming a patient on rectangles with rounded corners if they happen to be cell phones.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Patents can only be enforced against entities that actually make something useful. Since trolls don't actually make anything, they are immune to patent lawsuits (unless the IBM's patent troll patent sticks).
--- http://davidnehme.blogspot.com
why is this organisation designed to protect linux and not open sourced software in general? seems like the linux community are looking to build their own patent portfolio the easy way to shore up some funds by taking action against others.
portfolio
why is the droid now the "linux" icon..
I'm not sure if it's random or not, but it might be Slashdot is pulling its weight by only awarding me mod points when I log on using my Linux install and never when I use Windows.
Maybe it's based on heuristics?
I stopped reading after "and Sony"...
People who annoy you:
N_ggers
To name it the Open Invention Network Koalition.
I had an idea of why a company like Facebook might want to do this. If their servers all run GNU/Linux, they probably don't want to pay license fees for all of them if using GNU/Linux requires license fees due to patent infringement. Could that be part of it? (As much as I'd like to believe that all these companies just love GNU/Linux and want it to succeed...)
Not trying to flamebait but Sony? The same Sony that chose to remove the OtherOS option (which allowed users to run a form a Linux) from their PS3 consoles? Why would they be one of the founding members of this organization?
I hope they're not spending money on that stuff, it's free!
...as in Royal Philips Electronics - a consumer electronics company.
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Since Intellectual Ventures started filing patent enforcement lawsuits, I now completely disbelieve the claims of any business entity that it is buying up patents for "defensive purposes only." Now everyone seems to be buying membership into these supposedly-"defensive" patent aggregation companies. What will happen when OIN and other aggregators (inevitably) start to sue each other? Could be interesting.