Posted Nov 22, 2010 23:27 UTC (Mon) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
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They have some use of their members patents to bring defensive action. The companies organized by Microsoft are probably ones that want to have the OIN threat out of the way so that they can bring suits.
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
Posted Nov 23, 2010 1:19 UTC (Tue) by linuxrocks123 (guest, #34648)
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Are you sure about this? I can't find any documentation supporting this. I thought they could only bring defensive action with their own patents, which aren't affected by this, and that the members only agreed not to associate patents against the Linux system against each other, where the Linux system apparently does not include Android.
---linuxrocks123
And MS gets "certain [Novell] IP assets"
Posted Nov 23, 2010 1:31 UTC (Tue) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
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When they started the organization they sang a very different tune than they do today, which included the patents of members. I think there is a lot about OIN that is not on the web site.
I always felt that most industry-sponsored patent defense activities around Linux were more about defending software patenting than Linux. I doubt we can even get a straight answer from OIN on this issue.
OIN lacks credible success story
Posted Nov 24, 2010 17:31 UTC (Wed) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
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I'm not aware of the OIN having deterred anyone from asserting patents against anyone else. The OIN would like to make people believe so, but there isn't even one credible, verifiable success story. There has been some litigation involving Linux regardless of the OIN. When the OIN became involved with the TomTom case, everything that was known about the outcome wasn't any different from how comparable disputes ended.
OIN is all sorts of things including a patent pool
Posted Nov 24, 2010 17:43 UTC (Wed) by FlorianMueller (guest, #32048)
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In this blog post I outlined the three functions of the OIN. It buys up patents at auctions; it wants to serve as a deterrent (mutually assured damage); and it tries to establish a plurilateral cross-license agreement. All three of those activities are related to the concept of a "patent pool".
The problem is just that the OIN doesn't appear to have had a verifiable positive impact in any of those areas.