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December 8, 2008

Tomorrow, IBM and a consortium of large IT companies will launch a new program designed to help protect the open-source software community from threats posed by companies or individuals holding questionable software patents and seeking large payments for supposedly patent infringements by open-source software solutions.

Talks have been ongoing for many weeks now. An important feature of the new initiative, to be called "Linux Defenders" will be its call to independent open-source software developers all over the world to start submitting their new software applications to Linux Defenders.

For example, the group’s lawyers and engineers can help shape, structure and document the new software invention in the form of a “defensive publication” and without incurring any charges since the new service will be free for any open-source developer.

The group will then see to it that the publication, duly attributing authorship of the invention to the developer who submitted it, is filed on the www.ip.com Web site, an official database used by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and other patent examiners throughout the world.

The website helps to determine whether a proposed patent is truly novel, as any patentable invention is supposed to be.

In the real world, the defensive-publications initiative mounts a preemptive attack upon those who would try to patent purported software inventions that are not truly novel, in other words, innovations that are already known and already in use, though no one may have ever previously bothered to document them, let alone obtain a patent on them.

Such a process usually requires the hiring of patent lawyers as well as payment of significant filing fees.

FOSS (free and open-source software) is software that, by its licensing terms confers certain freedoms upon users that are usually forbidden by conventional proprietary software companies, like Microsoft. These freedoms include the right to see the software’s source code, alter it, copy it and redistribute it as one sees fit.

Keith Bergelt, CEO of Open Invention Network, the consortium launching Linux Defenders says "the intent is to create a defensive patent shield around open-source software and/or Linux applications. Formed three years ago, the core members of our group are IBM, Red Hat, Novell, NEC, Philips and Sony.

The Linux Defender program is being co-sponsored by two of the most prominent guardians of the free and open-source software community: the Linux Foundation (LF) in San Francisco and the Software Freedom Law Center in New York.

The Linux Defenders program is largely the brainchild of Bergelt, who took over as Open Invention Network’s CEO earlier this year. The program also reflects a new, more proactive role Bergelt envisions for OIN than the group has played in the past.

Additionally, the website is being co-developed by The New York Law School, which has been sponsoring its own complementary project, known as the Peer to Patent Community Patent Review site.

That site solicits assistance from the open-source and the Linux community to produce evidence that an invention for which a patent is currently being sought was actually already known or in use prior to the patent applicant’s filing.

Source: The Open Invention Network.

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