“equally critical of proprietary and open source myths, advocating software choice beyond marketing and romanticism”
Open Invention Network, the intellectual property company aimed at protecting an ecosystem around Linux, announced an increase in licensing program in 2010 first quarter. Among new licensees, also the French open source vendor Ulteo, one of the five winners of the OWF Open Innovation Awards.
Gaël Duval, Ulteo co-founder, commenting the decision to become a licensee said: Continue reading ‘Software Patents: OIN Licensing Program Grows Recognition’
Florian Mueller - the EU campaigner involved in the software patents war - a couple of months ago talking about the Sun-MySQL merger called IBM a “false friend of open source”, but when I asked for more details he told me to wait.
Today he pointed me to his new foss patents blog entry reporting IBM has concerns about unauthorized use of proprietary IBM information by TurboHercules contributors.
Roger Bowler - CEO of TurboHercules, the company behind the mainframe emulator distributed under the Q Public license - asked IBM to consider adding such intellectual property to the IBM “non-assertion” pledge to the open source community.
Is there any chance that IBM would consider that?
Read more at The Register and at Dana Blankenhorn’s blog.
Software AG released a survey carried out by the Technical University of Darmstadt, stating that, among other practical recommendations, software patents are needed to protect innovation.
Assoli today announced that under the free software pact initiative 232 Italian candidates signed the “caro candidato” pact. Candidates signing it state that they favor the development and use of free software, and will protect it from threatening EU legislation.
Only 27 MEP candidates subscribed until now, I hope more will pop up before the elections, Europe needs MEPs informed on free software issues.
The European Commission brings back software patents, this time through a via a centralized patent court, the European and Community Patents Court (draft agreement).
This court - if the draft will get approved at the next competitiveness meeting of May 28-29 - will have exclusive jurisdiction in respect of patent infringements.
The Software Patents war is finally over, glad open source cluster technology made it possible.
Brussels & Munich, 1st April 2009 — After years of confidential work, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) today announce a radical way to improve software patent quality: Binaries-As-Prior-Art, or BAPA. BAPA combines a database of billions of compiled computer programs (”binaries”) with a powerful Cloud search engine that can find any invention in microseconds.
Continue reading ‘European Software Patents: the War is Over’
The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue - a forum of US and EU consumer organizations - is organizing the “Patents, Copyrights and Knowledge Governance: The Next Four Years” conference in Washington, 12-13 January 2009.
Europe, WIPO and USA are all discussing IP policies, TACD now that the new US Administration is about to take place in Washington wants to bring some interested parties at the table.
Both the United States and the European Union are facing demands to modify policies on patents, copyrights and other forms of intellectual property protection, coming from different perspectives. There are high profile right-owner lobbying efforts directed at higher standards and tougher enforcement of intellectual property rights, and growing interest among consumer groups, academics and many innovative businesses to protect the public domain and retain or even expand user rights. There is also much interest in exploring newer approaches to the support of creative and inventive communities, that do not rely on notions of exclusive rights.
With the organisation of this event, the TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue calls for two days of discussion on the assessment and on the prospective of the American and European political and policy Agenda on intellectual property practices and policies.
Registration available on TACD’s website (Facebook group also available).
The New Year historically is a time for self improvement, and the commercial open source side of the world should be no exception to that.
Open Source thought leaders have expressed opinions and discussed the state of open source, here are my takes on some challenges and opportunities for the new year.
Continue reading ‘Commercial Open Source 2009: Challenges and Opportunities’
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?
The Stop Software Patent Initiative, earlier mentioned on this blog, is aiming at unifying the voices of European stakeholders willing to stop software patents.
Despite the European parliament five years ago adopted some amendments to limit the scope of software patentability, and later the amended directive was rejected, the topic is hot again. At that time the parliament was listening to some multinationals, many European SMEs, free software associations and a lot of volunteers. Lobbyist like Florian Mueller were also part of the equation, playing an important role, I would say.
Initiatives like the world day Against software patents, or the stop software patent initiative, are definitely a good thing. Not the ultimate answer to the problem though, I am afraid.
Keith Bergelt, Open Innovation Network’s new appointed CEO, was clear telling me that OIN won’t collaborate with FFII or similar organizations to fight against software patents in Europe. OIN cares just about Linux, so far. That is a pity, considering that they are lobbying around Europe now.
Sign the petition if you are against software patents. Italy seems the country with more signatures now, well done!
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