Open Invention Network Grows Despite Patent Troll Death Knell

snydeq writes Membership in the Open Invention Network, a software community set up to protect Linux against patent aggressors, has grown dramatically in the past year just as the tide seems to be turning on patent trolls. "Why all this interest in OIN? It offers little protection against nonpracticing entities — patent trolls who are organizationally small companies, even if the threat they pose is expensive and large. But it does offer protection against an equally insidious threat: big trolls," writes Simon Phipps. "The big corporations show up with their giant patent portfolios, threatening legal doom if royalties aren't paid. Attaching royalties to product or service delivery is a serious issue for companies, reducing margins long-term — especially in business models where the monetization is separated from the product. But OIN neutralizes that strategy for those building with open source, as the big corporations in the network both license their patent portfolios in and commit not to litigate against the open source software in the Linux System Definition. The bigger it gets, the better it protects."

Re:

[Barsteward]

i expect someone must be using the list exposed by the chinese to start invalidating the "patents", at least i hope so

Re:

[Lennie]

Well, who is currently in court with Microsoft about these patents ?:
Samsung
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com]

Who is not on the OIN-list ?:
Samsung.
http://www.openinventionnetwor... [openinventionnetwork.com]

I do see HTC, but also no Huawei, ZTE, Acer, Viewsonic, Quanta or Compal *

I also see Google (thus Motorola ?), but I don't think Microsoft has a deal with them.

* they have a list here:
http://www.dailytech.com/Of+La... [dailytech.com]

Suicide pact

[lucm]

The key in a suicide pact like that one is to let the other pull the trigger first. Then you take his wallet and run.

It's all about the quality of the property...

[American Patent Guy]

If these open-whatever folks own the patent right equivalent to a street in Manhattan, then maybe they'll have something. If they have the patent equivalent to a few acres of land in the Nevada desert where no one wants to go, then they'll be blown away with the dust.

The problem with any of this is that the people with the patent rights won't have much incentive to give them away for free. Investors don't relish giving away the company jewels to the world without something big in return. The owners of small

Shorter Patents

[Anonymous Coward]

Due to vested interests and the legacy of rubbish patents in the pile, I think the only practical way to deal with the problem now is keep the existing system but shorten patent validity. The default should be 8 to 10 years in my view. People argue that without longer payback companies wouldn't invest in technology. However, all the product design companies I have worked for invested in technology because otherwise their competition would leap frog them. That is how market economies work - it is meant to be a horrible death match between producers, because the system is meant to serve consumers (real people) not corporations (made up people).

The only valid exception I have heard to this is big pharma and certain medical technologies. Okay, so just set the system up to support this - we don't need to have blanket IP rules for every type of IP, and indeed we don't at the moment. The great thing about big pharma is that it appears to be a pretty well defined niche so can be covered with an exception reasonably efficiently. I'm sure there will be border cases that suffer, but right now everyone suffers.

Unfortunately english speaking countries have had a sort of national level bozo explosions so I doubt any sort of meaningful changes will ever come to pass.

Re:

[morgauxo]

Make it five years.

Shorter Patents

[Rangataua]

I've been of the view for some time that the patents in an industry should last one and a bit product life-cycles. This would mean that in IT, a genuine patent would last ~4 years at most.

Small "companies" were always the problem

[tsotha]

True "patent trolls", the way I've always understood them, were always small companies. Once large companies start suing each other it becomes MAD. I win in Korea with patent A, you win in the US, you sue me in the EU with patent B, I sue you in China with patent C... Look at the way the Samsung-Apple war played out (is that over?).

But if the company is just a patent portfolio, there's no way for the victim to retaliate. The cheapest way out is to settle, which gives them enough money to go after the n