Open Source to Buy Patents
The open-source movement will attempt to better negotiate a potential litigation minefield with the unveiling on Thursday of a company that will acquire technology patents to limit the movement’s legal exposure.
They include IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony. Through OIN, they will acquire patents and offer them royalty-free with the proviso that acquirers not assert them against Linux or other OIN members.
The Open Invention Network (OIN) will acquire related patents and offer them royalty-free to companies, institutions, or individuals that agree not to assert their patents against the Linux operating system or Linux applications.
The company refused to give details about the amount of funds being contributed by its benefactors, but said it was significant.
- Login or register to post comments
- Printer-friendly version
- 1903 reads
- PDF version
More in Tux Machines
- Highlights
- Front Page
- Latest Headlines
- Archive
- Recent comments
- All-Time Popular Stories
- Hot Topics
- New Members
digiKam 7.7.0 is releasedAfter three months of active maintenance and another bug triage, the digiKam team is proud to present version 7.7.0 of its open source digital photo manager. See below the list of most important features coming with this release. |
Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand
|
Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future TechThe metaverse is expected to uproot system design as we know it, and Samsung is one of many hardware vendors re-imagining data center infrastructure in preparation for a parallel 3D world. Samsung is working on new memory technologies that provide faster bandwidth inside hardware for data to travel between CPUs, storage and other computing resources. The company also announced it was partnering with Red Hat to ensure these technologies have Linux compatibility. |
today's howtos
|
file patents
The key is to file patents, not buy them as the patent office will accept almost any patent no matter how outlandish or obvious it is that it was invented before then. Look how far SCO has gone with its case. Apple I think buys patents just to get leverage with Microsoft. Key components of MySQL, Perl, Apache, and other popular open source packages could be patented and then they could use them as leverage with companies like Microsoft.