Re: IBM Patents

[James Bruce <bruce@andrew.cmu.edu>]

I believe that IBM is simply responding to the recent study that "Linux 
violates more than 283 patents".  Regardless of the truth to that study, 
this is IBM's way of stating that the 60 that they hold will not be used 
against Linux or other open source projects.

Bernd Petrovitsch wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-01-17 at 08:44 -0500, linux-os wrote:
>>Tue Jan 11 07:07:40 EST 2005
>>IBM has announced that it will provide free access to about
>>500 of its existing software patents to users and groups
> 
> No, they only promise now to not sue anyone given the following
> criteria. No one knows what happens in 5 years.

Yes we do "know what happens"; From the first page of IBM's pledge:
   "... the commitment not to assert any of these 500 U.S. patents and 
all counterparts of these patents issued in other countries is 
*irrevocable* except that IBM reserves the right to terminate this 
patent pledge and commitment only with regard to any party who files a 
lawsuit asserting patents or other intellectual property rights against 
Open Source Software." (emphasis added)

They also state that the pledge is intended to be "legally binding". 
So, unless you plan on suing an open source developer over intellectual 
property you should be fine.  That includes five years from now.  It 
could however, have negative effects on Jeff Merkey's plans to buy a 
copy of the kernel code.

> They have ca. 40000 AFAIK. So 500 is 1,25 %.
> And IBM is actually lobbying for patents so this is only a marketing
> thing.

I wouldn't expect them to change overnight.  Patents have made IBM (and 
many other companies) a lot of money.  The ones who's interests are not 
served by patents are citizens and small companies.  Not surprisingly, 
they are the ones fighting the EU initiative.  Thus everyone is doing 
what's in their best interests, which is hardly unexpected.  I am of 
course hoping that citizens' interests win out in the EU.

However, given the patent system already present in the US, IBM's action 
is a step in the right direction.  It strikes me as a lot like how 
Copyleft used copyright law to effect the opposite of the intended 
result.  While "no software patents" is desirable, if there is a way to 
work within the existing system to get some freedom back for developers, 
I don't think that's a bad thing.

>>working on open source software.
>> 	http://www.ibm.com/news/us/
>>
>>Many of these patents relate to interoperability, communications,
>>file-export protocols, and dynamic linking.
> 
> And almost all of them are pure software-patents and probably prior art.
> Thus they are - at least in Europe - not relevant and actually illegal
> if you believe in the current European patent law as defined by the
> European Patent Convention (see §52(2) for details).

I'm can't comment on every patent in the list, but many of the ones 
regarding image processing (my area of expertise) are novel enough under 
the current legal system to stand up in court.  Even if only 1 in 10 of 
the patents are valid in the overall list, those that remain represent 
new things that can now be released as open source, without fear of 
reprisal.  I for one hope this grows and other companies see the benefit 
of adding patents to the list.  Given that the EU will quite possibly 
get software patents within the next year, this could quickly become 
important for all of us.

  - Jim Bruce