Patent Law

OIN, defensive publications, and licensing

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

A tech vendor-backed company that buys up patents in an effort to protect the Linux community from intellectual property litigation will soon launch a Web site to help inventors file defensive publications -- documents that make details of an invention public, preventing others from later making patent claims on it.

"The more we can mobilize this community, the fewer patents that will actually be granted," said Keith Bergelt, who recently became CEO of the Open Invention Network [OIN]. "Whatever happens in the patent reform world in the next [U.S.] administration is great, but we have to act now to stop the granting of patents that threaten Linux and open-source in general."

IPBiz notes that the whole so-called "software patent problem" likely would not have happened if the "don't get patent" folks had been documenting, and making public, what they were doing all along. Although the article talks about "defensive publication," if these open source people had merely been publishing what they were doing (they didn't want patents), they would have been a whole lot better off.

Patents are about public disclosure. In this new push for "defensive publications," one sees that the patent system can produce public disclosure in more than way.

Carrots and sticks.

Separately, cross-correlate licensing work of OIN with efforts by Allied Security Trust.

Of the latter note:

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/06/coalition-for-patent-fairness-morphs.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/07/brian-hinman-of-allied-security-trust.html

Note Google is in Allied Security Trust AND is a OIN licensee.

Full post as published by IPBiz on August 10, 2008 (boomark / email).