Software Patents Clubs: Open Innovation Networks is back on stage
Open Innovation Network, an intellectual property company formed years ago by IBM, Novell, Philipps, Red Hat, Sony, and NEC to promote Linux by using patents to create a collaborative environment is back again.
Keith Bergelt, OIN CEO , few weeks ago was travelling around Europe to meet up with academic, entrepeneurs and influencers, and I got a chance to pose him few questions about OIN’s directions. OIN wants to foster open collaboration and sees patents as an impediment to such collaboration, possibly slowing down the innovation pace.
Keith says that in OIN’s vision there are “good” patents and “bad” patents, and they won’t take part in the European software patents debate. All in all OIN cares just about Linux, and middleware or application levels are not in OIN’s agenda for the time being. Google is proud to participate in OIN’s mission, as Di Bona made clear through the official google blog, and that is probably good for all (big) Linux end-users.
Will ever OIN go up in the open source software stack?
PL Hayes are discussing.
PL Hayes 9:14 pm on October 24, 2008 Permalink
Right… so it’s just a patent pool with a misleadingly grandiose name (Open Invention Network), set up for the benefit of companies using “the Linux operating system or certain Linux-related applicationsâ€.
Some of those companies lobbied for codification of the EPO’s software patent granting practices so it’s not surprising OIN won’t take part in the debate and it is clearly no friend of FOSS and innovation in general, contrary to the impression it sometimes gives.
And given its constituency and statements such as “Without the benefit of the exclusive rights conveyed by patents, it would be difficult to justify the risks inherent in the inventive process where substantial time or cost is involved.†etc. it seems likely its contribution to the debate would consist of reiteration of familiar fallacies and economically illiterate nonsense, so its absence is no bad thing.
Boycott Novell » Patent System Status in the United States, European Union 5:11 pm on October 26, 2008 Permalink
[…] a follow-up post from Roberto, more details are given. Keith says that in OIN’s vision there are “good†patents and “bad†patents, and they […]