OSDL patent commons gets chilly reception from the 'outspoken' (ZDNet) [LWN.net]

David Berlind looks at OSDL's patent commons in this ZDNet Blog. "Likewise, when OSDL jumped on board this week with its patent commons announcement, some of the more outspoken proponents of open source questioned the extent to which such a move really moves the ball forward. Two of those individuals -- attorney Larry Rosen who literally wrote the book on open source licensing and Bruce Perens who earlier this summer joined SourceLabs as vice president of developer Relations and Policy -- were talking virtually the same language when I interviewed them separately. Preaching to the same choir, both men questioned the need to donate patents to such a commons in the first place."

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OSDL patent commons gets chilly reception from the 'outspoken' (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 16, 2005 11:18 UTC (Tue) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]

I posted this over at slashdot and I think something similar a linuxtoday:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158939&cid=13315572

I think Bruce is right, but I think some big player like IBM could probably address the issue in a constructive way if they wished to do so.

Here is my idea:

When they next have a fundamental patent to apply for, apply for it in the name of the pool and not in their own name. This patent is now not subject to the cross patent agreements it may have with others.

Now it signs a cross patenting agreement with the pool so it can use all of the pool patents.

Where does this leave players who do not wish to play with the pool?

What if all of the big patenters who sincerely wanted to solve this issue applied for all of their new patents in the name of the pool and not on their own behalf?

Does anyone see any reason why such a plan could not work?

all the best,

drew

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/40737 [ourmedia.org]
Rocky Road on the eastern end of New Providence (Nassau) in the Bahamas.

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There was some followup discussions of a reasonable nature. If you check my page you can find them:

http://slashdot.org/~zotz/

OSDL patent commons gets chilly reception from the 'outspoken' (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 16, 2005 16:53 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

well what would be better would be for IBM and friends to publicly announce and lobby the government of the USA to reform patents.

By providing a 'patent pool' the open source community may inadvertantly make software patents seem reasonable and usable. It's like 'look even open source is able to use patents just like everybody else! Isn't that proof in itself that the system works?'

Which of course is completely wrong, the patent system shouldn't involve math or software in any way. The entire concept of 'IP' protections in this arena is fundamentally flawed.

By starting a 'prior art' pool of resources using publicly aviable software code you can then attack any software patent that comes out 10 ways to sunday. Buy having a large database of code and algorythmic solutions to problems it will help make the patent system for what it is: laughably flawed. If you can find a 1000 patents and have them over turned then it will go a long way to making the reform case.

For long-term patent protection the ideal situation would be to agressively attack any software patent that is handed out and make the patent office look the fool. Of course the major problem is finance. That stuff is stupid-expensive.

For short-term protection the patent pool may be usefull as it can be used to threaten to sue any company that threatens to sue a company for using free/open source software.

Unless it's something big like Microsoft or a agressive 'IP portfolio' legal house that has cross-licensing agreements with IBM and such and thus are immune to having most of IBM's + Freind's patents being used as a weapon back at them by third parties.

OSDL patent commons gets chilly reception from the 'outspoken' (ZDNet)

Posted Aug 17, 2005 11:53 UTC (Wed) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]

"well what would be better would be for IBM and friends to publicly announce and lobby the government of the USA to reform patents."

I agree 100% if there is a good chance of them doing it and of their efforts succeeding.

"By starting a 'prior art' pool of resources using publicly aviable software code you can then attack any software patent that comes out 10 ways to sunday."

I have pushed this idea for years now. One intermediate step in changeing the law that may have an easier path to success is to require the patent office to do prior art searches in this pool as well as in their patent pool before granting patents. You would then need to have a quick and cheap patent invalidation process where you can shoot down a patent that has prior art in this pool.

"If you can find a 1000 patents and have them over turned then it will go a long way to making the reform case."

That's gonna be a bit expensive if the numbers I have seen floated around in the past are anywhere near accurate. (Unless we do somethin like I suggest above or I am missing some key knowledge.) Ah, I see you are aware of this problem.

"Unless it's something big like Microsoft or a agressive 'IP portfolio' legal house"

This big "unless" is precisely what my proposal is designed to address. To take some fundamental patents and keep them from entering that cross licensing protection in the first place. This would mean actual software players would have to cross license with the pool. (Naturally, you would have to be careful to cover all the bases as they relate to workarounds.

all the best,

drew

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/43358