Jay Hollander's Weblog - Intellectual Property

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Tue Jan 11, 2005

IBM Offers Open Source Access to 500 Patents

In a move that alters the patent landscape in the software world, IBM has announced that it is offering access to 500 of its patents, royalty free, to open source software developers, such as those who created Linux.

This represents a policy shift and comes after a lengthy internal review by IBM, which holds more patents than any company in the US. The patent donation today is the first of others to follow, and the company is encouraging other companies to follow their lead and create a patent commons, so that free and open source software will be able to innovate without fear of patent infringement lawsuits.

IBM is pledging to seek no royalties from and to place no restrictions on companies, groups or individuals who use their patents in open-source projects, as defined by the Open Source Initiative, a nonprofit education and advocacy group that publishes a list of approved Open Source licenses. The group's definition includes allowing for modification, redistribution and publication of the source code.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/technology/11soft.html?oref=login
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4163975.stm

IBM's patent pledge:
http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/pledgedpatents.pdf

OSI licenses:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.php

Posted by: Jay Hollander
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Wed May 26, 2004

Acacia Claims Patents on Virtually All Streaming Media

Acacia Research Corp. claims to be sitting on a pot of patent gold. When it purchased a technology company in November 2001, it also gained a group of patents on a method for streaming media, according to an article in IEEE Spectrum.

"The patents, the company says, cover just about all streaming media: video-on-demand services, Internet radio, pay-per-view movies, and video news clips offered at sites like CNN.com. Even previewing 30 seconds of a song on iTunes or Amazon.com may fall under Acacia's portfolio of five U.S. and—at last count—17 European patents.

"Time Warner, Disney, Sony, Universal, and just about every other content provider on the Internet all need to watch out. So should Microsoft, RealNetworks, and Apple, makers of the software that most people use to stream audio and video to their desktops. If successful, Acacia's patient strategy of going after smaller prey first—particularly members of the unpopular online pornography industry—may leave bigger Internet players without a legal leg to stand on. . . . Meanwhile, over 100 firms have chosen to settle, paying royalties of 1 to 3 percent of their streaming-media revenue for the license that averts an infringement lawsuit. . . . Radio Free Virgin, a member of the Richard Branson family of Virgin businesses . . . had access to some of the best legal advice on two continents, yet it chose to license rather than fight." http://tinyurl.com/ypr9l

Posted by: Jay Hollander
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