Google can join OIN and help retard patent attacks if it wants

Posted Aug 13, 2010 13:53 UTC (Fri) by FlorianMueller (subscriber, #32048) [Link]

Google are merely licensees instead of members. They have the resources (money and patents) to make a significant contribution to OIN in order to protect themselves with mutual benefit to the other members.
Why don't Google join as members, i.e. what you call "owners" [...]

I don't know whether they could become a member. There are six companies in charge and they haven't admitted any new member in years.

But you're really wrong when you think that only members are supposed to be protected by the OIN. You can read on the OIN's website: Licensee grants license to other current and future licensees [for] [a]ll licensee patents and applications for the Linux System. So it's clear now that the license agreement creates a pool of all "licensee patents". Oracle, which is a licensee, can sue Google, another licensee, although any reasonable definition of "the Linux System" should now include Android, one of the strategically most important Linux distributions.

Members are also licensees; in addition they control those patents that the OIN owns, but the OIN's patents as well as all patents of all licensees are made available under the license agreement to all licensees (not only to members: please recognize that easily verifiable fact).

In your haste to rip on Moglen and the OIN (which seems like a conflation anyway)

I didn't conflate. I discussed separate issues: Moglen advocated the merger and was part of the camp that claimed Oracle was going to be a great owner of Sun's patents. I know that he told that to people personally. Now he's proven wrong on that count. But it's not a conflation to discuss the OIN in the same context only a few days after he gave a speech at LinuxCon in which he promoted the OIN (which in terms of financial backers has significant overlap with his SFLC).