IBM frees 500 patents

Posted Jan 12, 2005 3:09 UTC (Wed) by kmself (subscriber, #11565) [Link]

May I call your attention to the fact that Nikola Tesla donated his patents for the generation of Alternating Current to George Westinghouse.

This was an act of incredible significance. And a true precedent for demonstrating the benefits of such altruism.

Suggests that Mr. Tesla, in his beneficence, should have required Westinghouse release any patent-embodying technolgies under an OSI Certified Open Source license.

Note too: there's a difference between a grant to a single individual or entity, and a general grant. For a counterexample, look at RCA, which IIRC was conceived as a patent pool for radio broadcast technologies, as a way of addressing antitrust concerns WRT General Electric.