Open Invention Network
Encyclopedia
The Open Invention Network (OIN) is a company that acquires patent
s and licenses them royalty free
to entities which, in turn, agree not to assert their own patents against Linux
and Linux-related systems and applications.
, Novell
, Philips
, Red Hat
, and Sony
. NEC
subsequently became a member. Keith Bergelt is the chief executive of the company. Bergelt had previously served as President and CEO of Paradox Capital, LLC
OIN holds the Commerce One
Web services patents (previously acquired by Novell for $15.5 million), which cover several fundamentals of current business-to-business
e-commerce practice. OIN's founders intend for these patents to encourage others to join, and to discourage legal threats against Linux and Linux-related applications. As of April, 2010, OIN had more than 100 licensees.http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Open-Invention-Network-Announces-Dramatic-Increase-Licensing-Program-First-Quarter-1146551.htm
The list of key applications considered by OIN, according to Red Hat's Mark Webbink, includes Apache
, Eclipse
, Evolution
, Fedora Directory Server
, Firefox
, GIMP
, GNOME
, KDE
, Mono
, Mozilla
, MySQL
, Nautilus
, OpenLDAP
, OpenOffice.org
, Open-Xchange
, Perl
, PostgreSQL
, Python
, Samba
, SELinux
, Sendmail
, and Thunderbird
.
On March 26, 2007, Oracle
licensed OIN's portfolio, thus agreeing not to assert patents against the GNU/Linux-based environment, including competitors MySQL
and PostgreSQL
when used as part of a GNU/Linux system. On August 7, 2007, Google
also joined OIN as a licensee. On October 2, 2007, Barracuda Networks
joined OIN as a licensee. On March 23, 2009 TomTom
joined OIN as a licensee.
, another defensive patent management organization, that had been acquired from Microsoft through a private auction. Microsoft's sale appeared dubious because the patents were marketed as relating to Linux. If the patents had been acquired by patent trolls, they might have caused financial obstacles to Linux developers, distributors and users. OIN was able to avert this issue with the patent acquisition. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125236988735891147.html
On June 22, 2010, OIN announced a new Associate Member program and the recruitment of Canonical (previously an OIN licensee) as its first associate member. The announcement drew criticism from anti-software-patent activist and a European lobbyist Florian Müller
, who had previously criticized the OIN for a lack of transparency and for defining arbitrarily the scope of the patent protection it offers.
Use of Linux Defenders is free of charge to contributors and the hosting of Defensive Publications on databases accessible by patent and trademark office examiners around the world is borne by the program’s sponsors.
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
s and licenses them royalty free
Royalty free
Royalty-Free, or RF, refers to the right to use copyrighted material or intellectual property without the need to pay royalties for each use or per volume sold, or some time period of use or sales.-Computer standards:...
to entities which, in turn, agree not to assert their own patents against Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
and Linux-related systems and applications.
History
Based in Durham, NC, the company was founded on November 10, 2005 by IBMIBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
, Novell
Novell
Novell, Inc. is a multinational software and services company. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group. It specializes in network operating systems, such as Novell NetWare; systems management solutions, such as Novell ZENworks; and collaboration solutions, such as Novell Groupwise...
, Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
, Red Hat
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....
, and Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
. NEC
NEC
, a Japanese multinational IT company, has its headquarters in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. NEC, part of the Sumitomo Group, provides information technology and network solutions to business enterprises, communications services providers and government....
subsequently became a member. Keith Bergelt is the chief executive of the company. Bergelt had previously served as President and CEO of Paradox Capital, LLC
OIN holds the Commerce One
Commerce One
Commerce One was a pioneering e-commerce company founded in 1994 as DistriVision in Pleasanton, California. The company was renamed Commerce One in 1997, and went public in 1999. They were one of the darlings in the hot B2B sector, and saw their stock soar from 20 to over 600 in early 2000,...
Web services patents (previously acquired by Novell for $15.5 million), which cover several fundamentals of current business-to-business
Business-to-business
Business-to-business describes commerce transactions between businesses, such as between a manufacturer and a wholesaler, or between a wholesaler and a retailer...
e-commerce practice. OIN's founders intend for these patents to encourage others to join, and to discourage legal threats against Linux and Linux-related applications. As of April, 2010, OIN had more than 100 licensees.http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Open-Invention-Network-Announces-Dramatic-Increase-Licensing-Program-First-Quarter-1146551.htm
The list of key applications considered by OIN, according to Red Hat's Mark Webbink, includes Apache
Apache HTTP Server
The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to as Apache , is web server software notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. In 2009 it became the first web server software to surpass the 100 million website milestone...
, Eclipse
Eclipse (software)
Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...
, Evolution
Novell Evolution
Evolution or Novell Evolution is the official personal information manager and workgroup information management tool for GNOME. It combines e-mail, calendar, address book, and task list management functions. It has been an official part of GNOME since version 2.8 in September 2004...
, Fedora Directory Server
Fedora Directory Server
The 389 Directory Server is an LDAP server developed by Red Hat, as part of Red Hat's community-supported Fedora Project. 389 Directory Server is identical to the Red Hat Directory Server, just rebranded...
, Firefox
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...
, GIMP
GIMP
GIMP is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux.In addition to detailed image retouching and...
, GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...
, KDE
KDE
KDE is an international free software community producing an integrated set of cross-platform applications designed to run on Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Solaris and Mac OS X systems...
, Mono
Mono (software)
Mono, pronounced , is a free and open source project led by Xamarin to create an Ecma standard compliant .NET-compatible set of tools including, among others, a C# compiler and a Common Language Runtime....
, Mozilla
Mozilla
Mozilla is a term used in a number of ways in relation to the Mozilla.org project and the Mozilla Foundation, their defunct commercial predecessor Netscape Communications Corporation, and their related application software....
, MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
, Nautilus
Nautilus (file manager)
Nautilus is the official file manager for the GNOME desktop. The name is a play on words, evoking the shell of a nautilus to represent an operating system shell. Nautilus replaced Midnight Commander in GNOME 1.4 and was the default from version 2.0 onwards....
, OpenLDAP
OpenLDAP
OpenLDAP Software is a free, open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol developed by the OpenLDAP Project. It is released under its own BSD-style license called the OpenLDAP Public License. LDAP is a platform-independent protocol. Several common Linux distributions...
, OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org, commonly known as OOo or OpenOffice, is an open-source application suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems, is distributed as free software...
, Open-Xchange
Open-Xchange
Open-Xchange Server is an open source project sponsored by Open-Xchange, Inc., developing collaboration software; i.e. email, calendaring, address book, etc. Product offerings based on Open-Xchange Server are marketed under the brand of Open-Xchange Server and various other names, e.g. 1&1...
, Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
, PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
, Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
, Samba
Samba (software)
Samba is a free software re-implementation, originally developed by Andrew Tridgell, of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol. As of version 3, Samba provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients and can integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Primary Domain...
, SELinux
Security-Enhanced Linux
Security-Enhanced Linux is a Linux feature that provides a mechanism for supporting access control security policies, including United States Department of Defense-style mandatory access controls, through the use of Linux Security Modules in the Linux kernel...
, Sendmail
Sendmail
Sendmail is a general purpose internetwork email routing facility that supports many kinds of mail-transfer and -delivery methods, including the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol used for email transport over the Internet....
, and Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird
Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser...
.
On March 26, 2007, Oracle
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
licensed OIN's portfolio, thus agreeing not to assert patents against the GNU/Linux-based environment, including competitors MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
and PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...
when used as part of a GNU/Linux system. On August 7, 2007, Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
also joined OIN as a licensee. On October 2, 2007, Barracuda Networks
Barracuda Networks
Barracuda Networks, Inc. is a privately held company providing security, networking and storage solutions based on appliances and cloud services. The company’s security products include solutions for protection against email, web surfing, web hackers and instant messaging threats such as spam,...
joined OIN as a licensee. On March 23, 2009 TomTom
TomTom
TomTom NV is a Dutch manufacturer of automotive navigation systems, including both stand-alone units and software for personal digital assistants and mobile telephones. It is the leading manufacturer of navigation systems in Europe. TomTom's customer service is located in Amsterdam, Netherlands...
joined OIN as a licensee.
Countering Microsoft strategy for feeding patent trolls
In early September 2009, Open Invention Network acquired 30 patents, from Allied Security TrustAllied Security Trust
Allied Security Trust is a member based patent holding company that helps protect members from patent infringement lawsuits by non-practicing entities.-Business:...
, another defensive patent management organization, that had been acquired from Microsoft through a private auction. Microsoft's sale appeared dubious because the patents were marketed as relating to Linux. If the patents had been acquired by patent trolls, they might have caused financial obstacles to Linux developers, distributors and users. OIN was able to avert this issue with the patent acquisition. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125236988735891147.html
Ways to participate with Open Invention Network
Open Invention Network has three levels of participation, each of which helps to promote open source as a modality for invention and ensure ongoing freedom of action for GNU/Linux community members:- Founding Members — Open Invention Network comprises six forward-looking organizations that originally created OIN with a mission of enabling and protecting Linux-based systems as it relates to IPIntellectual propertyIntellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
rights. OIN's Founding Members include IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony. - Associate Members — Associate Members are recruited from Linux-related companies, including those that are leaders in advancing Linux-based migration into emerging growth markets. Associate Members make a commitment to the Linux Community by virtue of their commitments to and membership in OIN and help to ensure that patent issues do not impair growth of Linux-based systems.
- Licensees — Any company or organization that agrees to refrain from using its patent portfolio against the Linux System may become an OIN licensee. Licensees benefit from royalty-free access to a valuable and growing portfolio of strategic patents, as well as from ongoing communication with OIN concerning Linux-related patent issues. In so doing, licensees facilitate their access to OIN resources such as Linux Defenders, which is designed to address patent issues with the potential to impact Linux. OIN licensees, be they founding members, associate members or licensees, contribute to an ever expanding community of companies that share a common goal of ensuring freedom of action in and across the GNU/Linux ecosystem. Through their unified commitment to Linux, they limit the negative effect of patent-based challenges mounted by companies antagonistic to Linux and open source innovation.http://www.marketwatch.com/story/open-invention-network-announces-associate-member-program-and-recruits-canonical-as-its-first-associate-member-2010-06-22?reflink=MW_news_stmp
On June 22, 2010, OIN announced a new Associate Member program and the recruitment of Canonical (previously an OIN licensee) as its first associate member. The announcement drew criticism from anti-software-patent activist and a European lobbyist Florian Müller
Florian Müller
Florian Müller is a lobbyist, entrepreneur, consultant, and the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents campaign. He blogs about patent issues but does not have formally recognised legal qualifications....
, who had previously criticized the OIN for a lack of transparency and for defining arbitrarily the scope of the patent protection it offers.
Linux defenders
In addition to its Linux protection activities through intellectual property acquisition and royalty-free licensing, OIN offers and sponsors free services that eliminate low-quality patents—the food stuffs of aggressive strategics and patent trolls.http://linuxdefenders.org/about Designed to eliminate poor quality patents and ensure that only high-quality patents issue, the Linux Defenders program enables individuals and organizations to efficiently contribute to:- “Defensive Publications” that codify ‘known’ inventions that have not previously been patented so that they can be brought to the attention of the patent office to ensure that later developed patent applications claiming such inventions do not issue. In general, defensive publications are a vehicle which allows the Linux and broader open source community to create valuable prior art that enables Linux and freedom of action/freedom to operate for those active in utilizing Linux to drive innovation in products, services, and applications.
- “Peer to Patent” which solicits prior art contributions from the Linux and broader open source community to ensure patent examiners are aware of prior art relevant to published applications that are currently under review. In this way, the patent office is alerted to relevant prior art and only the most innovative and novel ideas are actually patented.
- “Post-Issue Peer to Patent” which solicits prior art contribution from Linux and the broader open source community to permit the invalidation of previously issued patents that were issued in error because of the patent office’s lack of awareness of relevant prior art.
Use of Linux Defenders is free of charge to contributors and the hosting of Defensive Publications on databases accessible by patent and trademark office examiners around the world is borne by the program’s sponsors.
See also
- Patent Commons ProjectPatent CommonsThe Patent Commons Project was launched on November 15, 2005 by the Open Source Development Labs . The core of the project is an online patent commons reference library aggregating and documenting information about patent-related pledges and other legal solutions directed at the open-source...
- Patent poolPatent poolIn patent law, a patent pool is a consortium of at least two companies agreeing to cross-license patents relating to a particular technology. The creation of a patent pool can save patentees and licensees time and money, and, in case of blocking patents, it may also be the only reasonable method...
- Software patentSoftware patentSoftware patent does not have a universally accepted definition. One definition suggested by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure is that a software patent is a "patent on any performance of a computer realised by means of a computer program".In 2005, the European Patent Office...
- Software patent debateSoftware patent debateThe software patent debate is the argument dealing with the extent to which it should be possible to patent software and computer-implemented inventions as a matter of public policy. Policy debate on software patents has been active for years. The opponents to software patents have gained more...
- Software patents and free softwareSoftware patents and free softwareOpposition to software patents is widespread in the free software community. In response, various mechanisms have been tried to defuse the perceived problem.-Positions from the community:...
- Open-source softwareOpen-source softwareOpen-source software is computer software that is available in source code form: the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders are provided under a software license that permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.Open...
- Free softwareFree softwareFree software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
- Allied Security TrustAllied Security TrustAllied Security Trust is a member based patent holding company that helps protect members from patent infringement lawsuits by non-practicing entities.-Business:...
- RPX CorporationRPX corporationRPX Corporation is a provider of patent risk management solutions, offering defensive buying, acquisition syndication, patent intelligence and advisory services. Since the company was founded in March, 2008, RPX claims to have introduced efficiency to the patent market by providing a rational...
External links
- Open Invention Network
- Gartner Research, OIN Will Promote Linux Innovation, but Raises Issues, November 16, 2005
- Webbink, Mark H. The Open Innovation Network. Linux Magazine, April 2006, page 18. Quoted in Open Invention Network (OIN), software patents, and FLOSS