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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
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
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.
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?
supporting Linux is a longtime company policy - remember the Sony rootkit: did it infect Linux machines?
isn't that like the mafia protecting local stores ????????
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'.
Looking out for their own interests.
Specifically in response to organizations like SCO who threatened to sue the users of Linux -- don't worry, Sony still doesn't give a crap about your rights. They also still don't care about your ability to run Linux on your Playstation.
This is all about them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
These are patents related to Linux. Are the ones you speak of ALSO related to Linux? And filing patents is not the same as HAVING patents. Of the numbers you mention, what portion of them are approved? (I have no idea! Do you?)
and once again we are reminded why software patents need to go the way of the dodo bird.
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.
Of the numbers you mention, what portion of them are approved?
120% of them. Fridays are double-patent days.
Seriously though, the system "works" by approving anything where you don't color outside the lines, reasonable or not.
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.
No, not really. Try another analogy, I'm sure you can figure one out that paints Sony as evil.
With the local stores analogy: it's more like the local stores banding together to fight the mafia. Just because some in the group of local stores have morally questionable motives doesn't mean they're part of the mafia. Sony partakes in some shady business practices, but I don't believe extortion is one of them. Funneling money into satellite companies to sue your competitors on bogus claims to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt within the marketplace is extortion. That deserves a mafia analogy. Kind of like bribing government officials and interfering with standards boards is akin to how the mafia bribes government officials and tampers juries.
Everything Sony's done, even the rootkit, seems to be things where the executive behind the decision actually thought the action was justifiable. That's a lot different than doing something inexcusable while aware of the fact that it's inexcusable and potentially illegal. Sony's like that shop owner that won't let kids in the store after some kid broke something and then ends up confused when their sales plummet. They don't have a top-down evil policy like some companies (MS, Facebook, Oracle). They just seem to make a lot of inept decisions and end up back-pedaling as a result. That's my perspective, at least.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
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!
Looking for violators and unclaimed patent space. Why do you think any of them are there.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
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
Only the 1 choice of lemmings: Windows
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
I stopped reading after "and Sony"...
Everything Sony's done, even the rootkit, seems to be things where the executive behind the decision actually thought the action was justifiable before the law
ftfy. Did they honestly think it was "justifiable" before their customers' expectations of privacy and security? They had to have at least some inkling that customers might not approve.
Tangentially: didn't know wikipedia had an article on it. Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal
the mobs also think that is is justified to break some bones to set an example or to get some cash back. Every action is justifiable in the eyes of the person taking it in the heat of the moment.
"every man is the hero of his own story" (pardon the sex bias)
But Pingus works on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
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?
Except the mafia usually did provide some protection, after all, a failed business can't pay it's protection monies.
...as in Royal Philips Electronics - a consumer electronics company.
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