A no-fly zone to protect Linux from patent trolls
On Tuesday a consortium of technology companies, including IBM (IBM), will launch a new initiative designed to help shield the open-source software community from threats posed by companies or individuals holding dubious software patents and seeking payment for alleged infringements by open-source software products.
The most novel feature of the new program, to be known as Linux Defenders, will be its call to independent open-source software developers all over the world to start submitting their new software inventions to Linux Defenders (Web site due to be operational Tuesday) so that the group’s attorneys and engineers can, for no charge, help shape, structure, and document the invention in the form of a “defensive publication.”
Linux Defenders will then also see to it that the publication, duly attributing authorship of the invention to the developer who submitted it, is filed on the IP.com Web site, a database used by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and other patent examiners throughout the world when they are trying to determine whether a proposed patent is truly novel, as any patentable invention is supposed to be.
In effect, the defensive-publications initiative mounts a preemptive attack upon those who would try to patent purported software inventions that are not truly novel — i.e., innovations that are already known and in use, though no one may have ever previously bothered to document them, let alone obtain a patent on them, a process usually requiring the hiring of attorneys as well as payment of significant filing fees.
“The idea is to create a defensive patent shield or no-fly zone around Linux,” says Keith Bergelt.
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IBM just won’t join the cause against software patents.
The comment from Benjamin Henrion hits the nail on the head. It says:
It won’t work against patent trolls. Competitors of the Linux-based OSes can put some patents in a troll company, and this kind of patent pooling won’t work, because you cannot countersue.
And what Mr Bergelt is dangerous, since a patent troll with a high quality software patent is much more complicated to invalidate:
“More patents is fine with me, as long as they’re high quality.”
Software cannot be protected by patents, as you always need someone’s else patent to sell or distribute your product. As a software producer, you are always subject to blackmail.