Some of our patents are missing

Posted May 17, 2007 9:38 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
Parent article: On Microsoft's patent claims

Jon,

Several years ago you reviewed OIN. At that time you mentioned the number of patents in their portfolio. There are fewer patents now. Where did the others go? I am assuming that their owner withdrew them. Doesn't that present some unpleasant implications regarding OIN?

Thanks

Bruce

Some of our patents are missing

Posted May 17, 2007 12:44 UTC (Thu) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link]

Perhaps more likely they expired/weren't renewed. An awful lot of patents don't run for the full 20 yrs, as every year costs money.

Some of our patents are missing

Posted May 22, 2007 19:52 UTC (Tue) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

IANAL and this should be verified independently, while talking with Red Hat legal what I understood from the discussion was that patents are not licensed but "donated" to OIN and it wouldn't be possible for the patent owners to take it back or even license it to other parties.