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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."
Contract tend to fix that, since even if a company is bought out they generally still have to honour the company they've purchased's contracts.
That being said most companies would never restrict themselves that much intentionally.
supporting Linux is a longtime company policy - remember the Sony rootkit: did it infect Linux machines?
how do we know that they're not simply joining up to see what others have there[?]
Patents, by their very nature, aren't secret, and OIN makes no secret of which patents are in their pool (it would rather defeat the purpose if they did), so I can't imagine what it is that you think they're going to learn by joining.
Promises are worth exactly as much as the paper they aren't written on.
Well, first of all, these promises are written on paper, and second of all, if a promise is made publicly enough, it doesn't matter whether it's written on paper, and as for your final fear about companies dissolving and assets being sold, the doctrines of promissory estoppel and laches would prevent any direct harm from such an event. A new asset owner couldn't just suddenly repudiate the promises made by the previous owner; they would have to give proper notice and allow those affected by the previous promise time to deal with the changing circumstances, at the very least.
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'.
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?
The members of OIN are not allowed to use their patents against other members. Similarly, if a member joins OIN and then leaves OIN, they will still be fighting against thousands of patents and would only assure their own destruction by going to court. Ie. your scenario simply doesn't fly.
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.
and once again we are reminded why software patents need to go the way of the dodo bird.
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?
Most patent portfolios come with irrevocable commitments to allow any patent they submit to the portfolio to be used freely forever.
This one apparently DOES NOT have such a commitment.
From their Agreement:
1.1 Subject to Section 1.2(b), OIN, grants to You and Your Subsidiaries a royalty-free, worldwide, nonexclusive, non-transferable license under OIN Patents to make, have made, use, import, and Distribute any products or services. In addition to the foregoing and without limitation thereof, with respect only to the Linux System, the license granted herein includes the right to engage in activities that in the absence of this Agreement would constitute inducement to infringe or contributory infringement (or infringement under any other analogous legal doctrine in the applicable jurisdiction).
Sounds all laudable and such, BUT:
There are still some worrisome features of this organization, such as the fact that the FSF is NOT part of it, and they are really granting cross licensing only to other members. Further, they have built a pretty massive escape clause into their License Agreement in Section 2.
A careful read of their cross license agreement suggest this could turn ugly after enough patents are in the system which also find their way into Linux.
The FAQ is here: http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/about_faq.php
The membership is here: http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/licensees.php (just about every Distro you ever heard of is represented).
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The members of OIN are not allowed to use their patents against other members.
First of all, that is only true for the disclosed patents, not any other patents they may have.
And second, it's a worthless promise.
Say I run BigCompany, and find through my association that my patent #12345678 could smash AnotherCompany and get us millions. I transfer my patent to BigCompany Holding, our parent company, who then in turn transfers it to BigCompany Law, another subsidary. They successfully sue AnotherCompany, and I get a big fat bonus from BigCompany Holding.
And I've done nothing wrong - my company didn't sue anyone, and I don't even hold the patent anymore.
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!
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
The reason Linux is still struggling with desktop acceptance is that Windows has improved 10-fold the last few years. Windows 7 is pretty much the most solid Desktop OS I've seen over the last 20 years and far too many OS's to count.
Sony Computer Entertainment America.
eg: The guys who sue everyone when it's not to their liking. You want them to have a whole portfolio of patents used in Linux? That's like asking an alcoholic to take care of a bar while the owner is going on some random quest.
Windows 7 has been less stellar on a machine that I had XP running fine on. I upgraded to an SSD and put Win7Pro64 on it, and have had nothing but issues.
My main complaint is with my sound card causing my machine to lock up hard if I'm launching/exiting a game and talking on Ventrilo at the same time.
I have a RAID array and Windows 7 keeps taking ownership of files inside folders on that drive causing issues when auto-patchers try to update content on that drive. (Permission denied!) Having to take ownership of the drive's folders every time the program updates is starting to REALLY get on my nerves.
I told Windows Update to ask me before applying updates and somehow it automatically applied a recent patch without asking.
There's also a curious condition occurring when I copy GBs of data off the SSD onto the RAID (and vice versa, but I know write speeds on SSD are not stellar) whereby Windows file copy slows to about 4KB/sec after 5 minutes. Canceling and restarting the copy where it left off speeds it up for about 5 minutes when it starts to crawl again.
I have none of those issues on my Linux partition on the same SSD (though, the games I run on Linux are not as resource intensive... so that issue cannot be compared, but the sole reason I have Windows is gaming.)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
To name it the Open Invention Network Koalition.
The real irony was in spending much more time, keystrokes, and energy to write whiny, f-bomb laden posts that complain about how much more work it takes to look it up. For what it is worth, it took me 5 keystrokes to type "SCEA" into my google toolbar and press enter.