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IBM's Kappos on patents: substance or PR?

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

On 14 Jan 08, the San Francisco Chronicle had an article on an eco-patent commons which noted:

IBM Corp., Nokia, Sony and Pitney Bowes are expected to announce Monday that they have put 31 inventions into an "Eco-Patent Commons" designed to make these Earth-friendly manufacturing and waste-reduction processes more widely available.

"This is an open source effort along the lines of the Creative Commons," said IBM assistant general counsel David Kappos, who is responsible for the company's intellectual property.

(...)

Kappos said the Eco-Patent Commons would be run by an independent, nonprofit group, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and expressed hope that other companies would follow the lead and add real clout to what is more a symbolic than substantive effort to make global business a little greener.

Kappos had earlier discussed IBM's "apparent schizophrenia" on patents.

One also recalls
IBM withdraws business method patent on outsourcing of services

Full post as published by IPBiz on February 01, 2008 (boomark / email).