Where the hell are my damned "redundant" moderator points?
Apologies.
It was simply frustrating that something in one of the original links is discussed in comments as though it doesn't exist in any form. That's why I replied with that info a few times to those sorts of comments.
I hadn't realized that I had posted twice in the same thread, which is, uhm, the very definition of redundant. Ackkk!
Thanks for pointing it out. It would deserve to be moderated down.
5. There is no standard GPLish license for patents, organization for common licensing, or solution to the posed problems suggested in the first fifty posts. Given the reality as presented, some solution should be found. Unfortunately, only the first fifty posts are ever reviewed.
I'm trying to promote the notion of just such a GPLish patent license via the Open Patent License under development at www.openpatents.org.
I doubt that any BSD OS will accept these terms. The BSD license is preferred over the GPL for the BSD OS's because the developers want all others to be able to use the code without fear of stepping into some legal mess.
Unfortunately, the legal mess of patents exists whether we want it to or not. The license provides for this Open Source only use, if that's how the owners submitted the patent.
The OPL also allows people to submit patents under BSD-type "you can use it for anything" terms, but I doubt many patent owners will be interested in that Option.
However, the OPL *also* lets patent owners submit patents such that they can be used in products containing only similarly OPL-licensed or mostly-less-restrictively OPL-licensed OPL-licensable IP. (As you can see, I haven't figured out how to succinctly say this stuff yet.) So if the BSD-derived+proprietary code contains no other patents, and the patent were licensed under at least the currently-labeled OPL Option 1, then it could be used in at least some BSD-derived but proprietary code.
I guess that's always my underlying worry about the idea of defensive patents taken out by any well-meaning individual or organization. It might seem like a fine idea at first, but if of them starts racking up gambling debts in Vegas, how tempting is it going to be to start enforcing those patents and extorting huge fees?
What we need is some sort of legal process where you can apply for a patent, and then "I leave this to the public now and forever."
Under the Open Patent License under development at www.openpatents.org, patents are submitted irrevocably, (after some different timeouts). I've talked with a patent attorney and find out that the general things I want the license to do can be done, but I didn't ask about the irrevocable submittions--I *think*, but haven't verified with any lawyer that it can be done. It's something I really want the license to do, otherwise it's not really fair to the other participants. (BTW, I also haven't asked that lawyer to debug the license in detail yet--a waste of time IMHO for a license that's still in flux. Once it settles down a bit, I'll pay for some legal debugging.)
On one hand, if a sufficiently large block of "Free Patents" were available then perhaps we could make the same kind of patent trades that the big companies do and get access to, say Unisys' patent on GIF, for example.
That's the sort of thing I want the Open Patent License at www.openpatents.org/ to help do.
BSD can be repackaged as close source. Linux cannot. If the patent usage licence resembles GPL there is no such problem. The question is that... Yes... Yet Another License...
Under the Open Patent License I'm trying to promote at www.openpatents.org, if you submit a patent via the Option currently named Option F, (the license is still under development), then the patent can be used in any software where the work as a whole is distributable under an Open Source License, (and where all other patents are at least available for use under the same Open Source License.)
The ramifications for BSD licensed code, (what's intended anyway), is that a patent in Pool F could be incorporated into that code and (usually) used freely, up until the code was made into a proprietary product. At that point someone would have to negotiate a separate patent license, as the OPL would no longer apply.
I've talked with a Patent attorney about the license in general, and found to my relief that the things I want it to do are in fact doable. I haven't asked him to go over the license in detail yet, as I don't see much point in spending money on the legal debugging when the license itself hasn't fully settled down. Once it seems that the license probably does what most parties would want it to do, or at least their goals are incorporated into it in such a way that a lawyer rewrite the wording properly, I'll take it to the lawyers again and go through a few rounds of legal debugging/general debugging.
If anyone is interested in discussing the topic in depth, there's a mailing list on the site.
Why not allow them to be licensed for whatever purpose you want so long as they aren't contaminated by proprietary extensions?
That's pretty much what I'm trying to promote with the Open Patent License under development at www.openpatents.org.
The OPL also allows you to submit patents with more restrictive conditions closer to the sort cameldrv suggests. You can submit patents under the OPL such that they can be used only in works works entirely distributable under an Open Source license and for which other incorporated patents are at least available under the terms of the same Open Source license.
However, I think most submitters would find the other Options of the license more useful to them--the other Options let the patents additionally be used in various types of "uncontaminated" proprietary products, given different sets of conditions. Those other Options are closer to what browser_war_pow suggested, in that proprietary products aren't immediately ruled out.
(Both Open Source and non Open Source development is harmed by software patents, so I think any solution like this should be inclusive of both groups.)
If anyone's interested, there's a mailing list for discussion of the Open Patent License.
I am not altogether opposed to the idea of making the loser pay the winner's costs, but I think that a cap on this liability based on how much the loser spent on legal costs could be a good idea.
I would suggest a rule where the loser would have to pay the winner the minimum(loser's legal fees, winner's legal fees)*(fraction of the case that the winner won - fraction of the case that the loser won).
I put the fractional term in the formula because IMHO the loser shouldn't have to pay for the parts of the case that the winner didn't win, as it were. Also, if the winner originally claimed ten million dollars in damages but only ended up winning a token dollar in the end, I think it would be just for the winner to have to pay 999998/1000000 of that cap to the technical loser.
I don't know how difficult it would be in practice to define that fraction in the formula; I assume that in practice it's something the judge could easily do.
But given this sort of rule, as a case progresses any party concerned about costs can simply make sure that they can afford to pay twice their currently-projected legal fees; such a rule should make it more difficult for a well-funded company to intimidate a lesser-funded party through financially-draining lawsuits.
The Open Patent License under development at www.openpatents.org includes the concept of patent-like intellectual properties. I want the license to adress restrictions that have real-world effects similar to the restrictive effects of patents, as opposed to only addressing the patents themselves. Copyrighting facts is a sort of restriction that seems to me to be closer to the type of restrictions patents create, because both patents and copyrights on facts restrict use of publicly accessable information.
That and some other concepts are merged into something I've abbreviated as "PLIPs", (someone please come up with a better acronym!) People who agree to the OPL's submit-all-your-software-patents Option, granting them the use of other similar patents in products containing no other IP, have to submit all their PLIPs as well.
This might be a useful stopgap measure until we get some sanity in IP legislation worldwide.
The idea of a GPL or copyleft for software patents is challenging. But to accomplish anything, the project must be on a technically sound basis. That means technically adept from a software technology standpoint and also technically correct from a patent law standpoint.
This may be an idea whose time has come. Are any of you willing to join in forming a SIGSWPAT or other forum to discuss this further with a view toward establishing an organization to implement these ideas? Is there an existing organization into which this could properly be incorporated? Would anybody want to start a Web site or include a site for this as part of an existing, related one?
Sure, take a look at www.openpatents.org. I've got a license in progress there, a mailing list to discuss the license and the project as a whole, and I've gone through the initial steps to form a nonprofit organization to implement it all.
I'm trying to put together just such a system with the Open Patent License as described at www.openpatents.org.
(I've talked with a patent attorney to make sure the general idea of the license can be made workable, but I'm holding off on paying for the line-by-line legal debugging of the license until it stabilizes a bit more. If you're interested in discussing and improving the license, there's info on the site about an opl-discuss mailing list you can subscribe to. )
However, no matter how much I dislike them and dislike spending time on creating them, you need those kinds of patents for trading or your company goes under.
Instead of merely trading patents with a few other parties, which doesn't do anything to help solve the larger problem, I would suggest a method of cross-licensing them with everyone who uses them defensively and gaining the advantages that would imply.
At www.openpatents.org, I'm trying to promote the notion of an Open Patent cross-licensing agreement. Companies who agree to its various Options have access to different sets of its Open Patent Pools. One consequence of this is that if you agree to the terms and conditions of certain Options of the license, in addition to being able to negotiate licensing agreements based on your own patent portfolio, you would also effectively be able to negotiate based on the much larger portfolios of one or more of the Open Patent Pools.
Since you have written software patents, (presumably for the company you're currently working for, and presumably for reasons that both you and the company consider defensive), would you be interested in submitting patents under such a license?
I can, however, imagine closed source vendors guaranteeing never to use the UCITA remedies available to them, as a part of their contract with customers. It may be the only way to keep customers if these laws take effect.
For instance, if you agree to Option 4 of the Open Patent License, that means that:
You have submitted all your software patents under the rules of Option 4.
You also agree not to enforce UCITA-type restrictions in certain circumstances.
Other companies can create products incorporating these submitted patents if 2 conditions are met. (There are more really, this is a simplification):
If the product contains only patents licensed at that level and lower. (There are other rules for Open Source products--I won't get into that here.)
If the other company has also agreed to Option 4, thus licensing the use of its software patents and agreeing not to enforce UCITA-type restrictions under certain conditions.
The general idea of the Open Patent License is that you agree to abandon your (patent and patent-like) IP monopoly powers over all those who abandon theirs to an equal or greater extent. I consider restrictions on reading, (that is, restrictions on reverse-engineering), to be very close to the type of restrictions patents create, and so I think anything that addresses the problems patents cause should address these UCITA-supported monstrosities as well.
I don't object to the organization helping someone obtain a patent, I just think it can be done somewhat indirectly, and without the need for the organization to end up owning it, (as long as it's licensed under the OPL), and that doing it indirectly can be the more stable solution in the long term.
The strategy I have in mind is to put together either some sort of Idea Futures system as Robin Hanson has discussed, and/or a Castpoint system as Marc Stiegler discusses in Earthweb.
This way other people can end up sponsoring the sort of help you're talking about. As much as I'd like to cross-index all human knowledge myself, partially in order to patent inventions and license them under the OPL with an aim to freeing up knowledge, solving problems, and making money, but mostly because it would be fun, I still think that neither I nor a single organization would be as efficient at it as a system that encourages everybody to have a go. Also, the successful implementation of such a system would show that patents aren't necessary, and that their goals could be met using methods that don't restrict scientific and literary freedoms.
Also, I'm lazy. I would rather PPI act more as a clearinghouse for developing solutions available under the OPL and let others do the legal work that would become necessary than somehow try to incorporate all of those legal functions within PPI through hiring or outsourcing. (I'm not a lawyer, so I try to avoid that sort of thing as much as possible. Obviously I have to go to an IP attorney to ask patent licensing questions and will have to ask for legal help in getting the license checked over and debugged, but all that's quite different from contemplating forming an organization that provides these sorts of legal services itself.)
At the moment, however, I think it's more important to develop the license and get legal help in debugging it, and sell people and companies on the idea and the license. That has the possibility of freeing up a lot of patent encumberences quickly, so it's the first thing I'd want to do.
For long term stability, I absolutely agree that we need implement something that helps researchers, for instance, patent their inventions to be licensed under the OPL in the cases where that's possible. (As opposed to cases in which, say, the university claims all rights.)
But I consider selling the license to be the immediate goal. Solving the rest of the world's problems can wait until next year.:-)
1) Use an extreamly viral license the prohibits mixed use of the patent with any patents not distributed under the same license, i.e. no company can use our patents unless the cross licence with the rest of the world via our license.
I'm trying to promote something fairly close to that with the Open Patent License.
2) Allow companies to get arround 1 by paying thorugh the nose and use the money to reward the researchers and pay for lawyers, i.e. compramize our principals occasionally.
I would rather the researchers own the patents themselves, and merely license them under the OPL. If someone wants to use the patent other than as the Open Patent License allows, they can go to the patent holder, in this case the researcher or perhaps the university, to negotiate terms.
Unfortunatly, the above dose require a lot of orginisation, a lot of conenctions, and a lot of work.
I don't think these problems are insurmountable. Most companies who acquire software patents do so primarily for defensive reasons. I expect that after we get to a well-debugged version 1.0 of the license, and a few companies start agreeing to it, that more will quickly agree. I would expect most of the people for whom software patents are a net loss overall would eventually agree to the license.
I could envision some kind of voluntary patent system, where individuals or corporations could opt in or out of in its entirety (opting in or out of individual patents is obviously ludicrous). So those of us who are opposed to patents could opt out of the patent system entirely -- we would not be bound by any patents, but we could not file for, contribute any work to, or hold any either.
I aim to have the Open Patent License do something vaguely like that. Under the license, (still in alpha), you can agree to give up your patent and patent-like monopoly powers over anyone who similarly agrees, in Open Source products and products for which all covered IP is similarly licensed. But if a (non Open Source) product incorporates patents not licensed under the OPL, then we're back to having to worry about individual patent licenses for everything, so it's only opt-out for sets of IP in which all the owners have similarly opted-out.
That's probably as close as you can get to a complete opt-out without legislative changes, but it should allow those who hold patents but for whom the patent system is a hinderence a partial escape from the stranglehold patents can have on progress and invention.
Software patents are a Bad Thing. It's good to fight to change them. But until they actually are changed, we do have to respect the system.
However, until the patent system is changed, it can yet prove useful. Consider: The GPL uses copyright, which is supposed to prevent people from copying works, to instead allow such copying. Something similar could (albeit more expensively) be done with patents relatively easily.
Those who submit their patents under this license (the "Open Patent License") would gain the use of other patents similarly licensed and would also gain the defensive benefits of the larger patent portfolio this license would create.
Those who are obtaining patents for defensive reasons can pretty much only benefit from such an agreement.
Maybe some organization to keep track of "prior art" would be helpful.
The Software Patent Institute keeps up a searchable prior art database, and they accept submissions.
Or there could simply be a non-profit organization that accumulates patents (as silly as possible) and then force companies to cross-license for all open source software.
I'm not out to force companies to do anything they don't want to do, but as far as the cross-licensing part goes, and all silliness aside, (parden the pun), I'm trying to promote the notion of a cross-license agreement at www.openpatents.org as a method of solving (some of) the problem of software patents.
If people who use their patents defensively could cross-license their patents with each other, that larger total portfolio could help protect them against patent lawsuits. (And of course they wouldn't have to worry about lawsuits among themselves. Well, at least patent infringement lawsuits about covered uses.)
...or sue Micro$oft for a couple billions...
Microsoft is one of the good guys on this issue. They have never used their software patents offensively. You can perhaps complain about them for other reasons and in other contexts, but IMHO it's not appropriate to complain about them as far as software patents are concerned.
Didn't I hear about an Open Source Patent Project? Does anyone know how it's going?
If you are referring to my Open Patent License project atwww.openpatents.org, then it's still going. I'm getting comments and help from a few folks on the license, but I've slacked off on my contacts. (Been sick.) During the Holidays and especially right before Y2K is probably not the best time to be talking with legal folks at technology companies, so I'll probably hold off until after the new years to resume that. (Unless the world comes to an end *and* everyone starts suing one another. Then I'll hold off a couple more weeks.:-) ) Of course, if anyone has any patents or suggestions to contribute, there's no need to wait until after the new year to let me know, or to join the mailing list.
Have an Open Ideas Database where potentially patentable idea (however "obvious") can be made public and thus no longer patentable.
(As a side note, neither a cross-licensing proposal nor a prior art database needs limit itself to OSS-type ideas. The OSS/Free Software and proprietary worlds are both at risk by software patents, and IMHO any solutions to these types of problems should be inclusive of both groups.)
I'm glad that my company at least uses its patents for defensive reasons only.
Then would they be willing to help solve the problem for both themselves and others by actually coming out and agreeing to one of the Options (say number 4) of the Open Patent License?
The idea of the license is that if those who say "we only use our patents defensively", explicitely give each other permission to use those "defensive" patents uhm, err, defensively, then they'll all have the effective benefit of a much larger portfolio.
(Actually, it's a little more complicated than the description above--there are 7 Options to cover different sorts of cases, but that's pretty much the basic idea.)
If you have any comments or suggestions about the www.openpatents.org site, please let me know, or subscribe to the mailing list.
Exactly. Prior art can only help defend against patents the prior art happens to cover, whereas a patent portfolio can potentially defend against a much larger set of patents.
I would ask that anyone who actually does own any software patents and who wants to help form such a portfolio, (as well as wanting to benefit from the existence of such a patent portfolio), to consider licensing their patents under some option of the Open Patent License.
If you know someone who owns patents and would be interested in using them to help solve the problems (software) patents cause, please bring the subject up with them.
And if you have any suggestions on the Open Patent License itself, there's a mailing list for discussing the license. I'd be happy to incorporate any improvements.
We don't need to defeat anyone. All we need to do is provide a way to help individuals and corporations escape the trap that (software) patents create.
I've been trying to put together something similar to the license you propose. See www.openpatents.org for more information.
Slashdot Mirror
It was simply frustrating that something in one of the original links is discussed in comments as though it doesn't exist in any form. That's why I replied with that info a few times to those sorts of comments.
I hadn't realized that I had posted twice in the same thread, which is, uhm, the very definition of redundant. Ackkk!
Thanks for pointing it out. It would deserve to be moderated down.
The OPL also allows people to submit patents under BSD-type "you can use it for anything" terms, but I doubt many patent owners will be interested in that Option.
However, the OPL *also* lets patent owners submit patents such that they can be used in products containing only similarly OPL-licensed or mostly-less-restrictively OPL-licensed OPL-licensable IP. (As you can see, I haven't figured out how to succinctly say this stuff yet.) So if the BSD-derived+proprietary code contains no other patents, and the patent were licensed under at least the currently-labeled OPL Option 1, then it could be used in at least some BSD-derived but proprietary code.
Perhaps the Open Patent License I'm trying to promote at www.openpatents.org can eventually be accepted by the community.
The ramifications for BSD licensed code, (what's intended anyway), is that a patent in Pool F could be incorporated into that code and (usually) used freely, up until the code was made into a proprietary product. At that point someone would have to negotiate a separate patent license, as the OPL would no longer apply.
I've talked with a Patent attorney about the license in general, and found to my relief that the things I want it to do are in fact doable. I haven't asked him to go over the license in detail yet, as I don't see much point in spending money on the legal debugging when the license itself hasn't fully settled down. Once it seems that the license probably does what most parties would want it to do, or at least their goals are incorporated into it in such a way that a lawyer rewrite the wording properly, I'll take it to the lawyers again and go through a few rounds of legal debugging/general debugging.
If anyone is interested in discussing the topic in depth, there's a mailing list on the site.
The OPL also allows you to submit patents with more restrictive conditions closer to the sort cameldrv suggests. You can submit patents under the OPL such that they can be used only in works works entirely distributable under an Open Source license and for which other incorporated patents are at least available under the terms of the same Open Source license.
However, I think most submitters would find the other Options of the license more useful to them--the other Options let the patents additionally be used in various types of "uncontaminated" proprietary products, given different sets of conditions. Those other Options are closer to what browser_war_pow suggested, in that proprietary products aren't immediately ruled out.
(Both Open Source and non Open Source development is harmed by software patents, so I think any solution like this should be inclusive of both groups.)
If anyone's interested, there's a mailing list for discussion of the Open Patent License.
I put the fractional term in the formula because IMHO the loser shouldn't have to pay for the parts of the case that the winner didn't win, as it were. Also, if the winner originally claimed ten million dollars in damages but only ended up winning a token dollar in the end, I think it would be just for the winner to have to pay 999998/1000000 of that cap to the technical loser.
I don't know how difficult it would be in practice to define that fraction in the formula; I assume that in practice it's something the judge could easily do.
But given this sort of rule, as a case progresses any party concerned about costs can simply make sure that they can afford to pay twice their currently-projected legal fees; such a rule should make it more difficult for a well-funded company to intimidate a lesser-funded party through financially-draining lawsuits.
That and some other concepts are merged into something I've abbreviated as "PLIPs", (someone please come up with a better acronym!) People who agree to the OPL's submit-all-your-software-patents Option, granting them the use of other similar patents in products containing no other IP, have to submit all their PLIPs as well.
This might be a useful stopgap measure until we get some sanity in IP legislation worldwide.
(I've talked with a patent attorney to make sure the general idea of the license can be made workable, but I'm holding off on paying for the line-by-line legal debugging of the license until it stabilizes a bit more. If you're interested in discussing and improving the license, there's info on the site about an opl-discuss mailing list you can subscribe to. )
Such as the Open Patent License described at www.openpatents.org perhaps?
Instead of merely trading patents with a few other parties, which doesn't do anything to help solve the larger problem, I would suggest a method of cross-licensing them with everyone who uses them defensively and gaining the advantages that would imply.
At www.openpatents.org, I'm trying to promote the notion of an Open Patent cross-licensing agreement. Companies who agree to its various Options have access to different sets of its Open Patent Pools. One consequence of this is that if you agree to the terms and conditions of certain Options of the license, in addition to being able to negotiate licensing agreements based on your own patent portfolio, you would also effectively be able to negotiate based on the much larger portfolios of one or more of the Open Patent Pools.
Since you have written software patents, (presumably for the company you're currently working for, and presumably for reasons that both you and the company consider defensive), would you be interested in submitting patents under such a license?
The (unfinished) Open Patent License has options to do this.
For instance, if you agree to Option 4 of the Open Patent License, that means that:
Other companies can create products incorporating these submitted patents if 2 conditions are met. (There are more really, this is a simplification):
The general idea of the Open Patent License is that you agree to abandon your (patent and patent-like) IP monopoly powers over all those who abandon theirs to an equal or greater extent. I consider restrictions on reading, (that is, restrictions on reverse-engineering), to be very close to the type of restrictions patents create, and so I think anything that addresses the problems patents cause should address these UCITA-supported monstrosities as well.
I don't object to the organization helping someone obtain a patent, I just think it can be done somewhat indirectly, and without the need for the organization to end up owning it, (as long as it's licensed under the OPL), and that doing it indirectly can be the more stable solution in the long term.
The strategy I have in mind is to put together either some sort of Idea Futures system as Robin Hanson has discussed, and/or a Castpoint system as Marc Stiegler discusses in Earthweb.
This way other people can end up sponsoring the sort of help you're talking about. As much as I'd like to cross-index all human knowledge myself, partially in order to patent inventions and license them under the OPL with an aim to freeing up knowledge, solving problems, and making money, but mostly because it would be fun, I still think that neither I nor a single organization would be as efficient at it as a system that encourages everybody to have a go. Also, the successful implementation of such a system would show that patents aren't necessary, and that their goals could be met using methods that don't restrict scientific and literary freedoms.
Also, I'm lazy. I would rather PPI act more as a clearinghouse for developing solutions available under the OPL and let others do the legal work that would become necessary than somehow try to incorporate all of those legal functions within PPI through hiring or outsourcing. (I'm not a lawyer, so I try to avoid that sort of thing as much as possible. Obviously I have to go to an IP attorney to ask patent licensing questions and will have to ask for legal help in getting the license checked over and debugged, but all that's quite different from contemplating forming an organization that provides these sorts of legal services itself.)At the moment, however, I think it's more important to develop the license and get legal help in debugging it, and sell people and companies on the idea and the license. That has the possibility of freeing up a lot of patent encumberences quickly, so it's the first thing I'd want to do.
For long term stability, I absolutely agree that we need implement something that helps researchers, for instance, patent their inventions to be licensed under the OPL in the cases where that's possible. (As opposed to cases in which, say, the university claims all rights.)
But I consider selling the license to be the immediate goal. Solving the rest of the world's problems can wait until next year. :-)
I would rather the researchers own the patents themselves, and merely license them under the OPL. If someone wants to use the patent other than as the Open Patent License allows, they can go to the patent holder, in this case the researcher or perhaps the university, to negotiate terms.
I don't think these problems are insurmountable. Most companies who acquire software patents do so primarily for defensive reasons. I expect that after we get to a well-debugged version 1.0 of the license, and a few companies start agreeing to it, that more will quickly agree. I would expect most of the people for whom software patents are a net loss overall would eventually agree to the license.
I aim to have the Open Patent License do something vaguely like that. Under the license, (still in alpha), you can agree to give up your patent and patent-like monopoly powers over anyone who similarly agrees, in Open Source products and products for which all covered IP is similarly licensed. But if a (non Open Source) product incorporates patents not licensed under the OPL, then we're back to having to worry about individual patent licenses for everything, so it's only opt-out for sets of IP in which all the owners have similarly opted-out.
That's probably as close as you can get to a complete opt-out without legislative changes, but it should allow those who hold patents but for whom the patent system is a hinderence a partial escape from the stranglehold patents can have on progress and invention.
Those who submit their patents under this license (the "Open Patent License") would gain the use of other patents similarly licensed and would also gain the defensive benefits of the larger patent portfolio this license would create.
Those who are obtaining patents for defensive reasons can pretty much only benefit from such an agreement.
The Software Patent Institute keeps up a searchable prior art database, and they accept submissions.
I'm not out to force companies to do anything they don't want to do, but as far as the cross-licensing part goes, and all silliness aside, (parden the pun), I'm trying to promote the notion of a cross-license agreement at www.openpatents.org as a method of solving (some of) the problem of software patents.
If people who use their patents defensively could cross-license their patents with each other, that larger total portfolio could help protect them against patent lawsuits. (And of course they wouldn't have to worry about lawsuits among themselves. Well, at least patent infringement lawsuits about covered uses.)
Microsoft is one of the good guys on this issue. They have never used their software patents offensively. You can perhaps complain about them for other reasons and in other contexts, but IMHO it's not appropriate to complain about them as far as software patents are concerned.
If you are referring to my Open Patent License project atwww.openpatents.org, then it's still going. I'm getting comments and help from a few folks on the license, but I've slacked off on my contacts. (Been sick.) During the Holidays and especially right before Y2K is probably not the best time to be talking with legal folks at technology companies, so I'll probably hold off until after the new years to resume that. (Unless the world comes to an end *and* everyone starts suing one another. Then I'll hold off a couple more weeks. :-) ) Of course, if anyone has any patents or suggestions to contribute, there's no need to wait until after the new year to let me know, or to join the mailing list.
That's being done at the Software Patent Institute.
(As a side note, neither a cross-licensing proposal nor a prior art database needs limit itself to OSS-type ideas. The OSS/Free Software and proprietary worlds are both at risk by software patents, and IMHO any solutions to these types of problems should be inclusive of both groups.)
Then would they be willing to help solve the problem for both themselves and others by actually coming out and agreeing to one of the Options (say number 4) of the Open Patent License?
The idea of the license is that if those who say "we only use our patents defensively", explicitely give each other permission to use those "defensive" patents uhm, err, defensively, then they'll all have the effective benefit of a much larger portfolio.
(Actually, it's a little more complicated than the description above--there are 7 Options to cover different sorts of cases, but that's pretty much the basic idea.)
If you have any comments or suggestions about the www.openpatents.org site, please let me know, or subscribe to the mailing list.
I would ask that anyone who actually does own any software patents and who wants to help form such a portfolio, (as well as wanting to benefit from the existence of such a patent portfolio), to consider licensing their patents under some option of the Open Patent License.
If you know someone who owns patents and would be interested in using them to help solve the problems (software) patents cause, please bring the subject up with them.
And if you have any suggestions on the Open Patent License itself, there's a mailing list for discussing the license. I'd be happy to incorporate any improvements.
I've been trying to put together something similar to the license you propose. See www.openpatents.org for more information.