I.B.M. to Give Free Access to 500 Patents
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I.B.M. plans to announce on Tuesday that it is making 500 of its software patents freely available to anyone working on open-source projects.
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The patent Apple is seeking covers the &quot;methods and systems for submitting media to a media distribution site. [... The submission of media to the media distribution site is able to be performed
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Open source is changing the game by making software free.  About time.
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The patent is for a digital-watermarking technology that could be used to protect the rights of content owners even when digital music is distributed without DRM protection.
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Search giant now provides easy access to U.S. patent database.
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The company plans to announce the creation of I.B.M. Lotus Symphony, free programs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.
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Google is planning to launch a new product that will allow researchers to store open-source datasets for free, allowing anyone with an internet connection access to terabytes of scientific data.
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Computer, chip maker will license much of the technology behind their compact servers -- for free. NEW YORK  - International Business Machines Corp.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM is making it easier to utilize its patented intellectual property to implement nearly 200 standards in SOA, Web services, security, and other spaces. Under a pledge issued by the company Wednesday, IBM is granting universal and perpetual access to intellectual property that might be necessary to implement standards designed to make software interoperable. IBM will not assert any patent rights to its technologies featured in these standards. The company believes its move in this space is the largest of its kind. "These are what I could call the core infrastructure standards that people now use around such things as SOA," said Bob Sutor, IBM vice president of open source and standards. Web 2.0 applications also could be developed, for example. The company seeks to spur development of software that leverages these standards. Among the technologies included on IBM's list, accessible here, are various standards pertaining to SOAP, SAML, XML Schema, and Service Component Architecture. WS-* specifications are featured as well. IBM was not the sole developer of many of these standards, which are often under the jurisdiction of organizations like the World Wide Web Consortium and OASIS. But the company did contribute to their development. IBM's technology previously could be applied on a royalty-free basis when used in conjunction with the standards. But developers and customers had to go through a royalty-free licensing process, which involved filling out forms. "What we decided to do was make it simpler for people to implement all of them," Sutor said. IBM has provided a non-assertion statement that says people are free to use any of its patents needed to implement the standards, provided they do not sue IBM or anyone else over use of their own patents involved in implementing the standards. With the new setup, an open-source developer, for example, does not have to spend time getting licenses from IBM. Sutor acknowledged, though, that some implementers have simply chosen not to get the licenses anyway. IBM has about 40,000 patents. Any of these that apply can be used when deploying the standards. With IBM's effort, users have one less thing to be concerned about, said analyst Michael Goulde, of Forrester Research. "Nobody's going to change what they're doing. I think they're just going to be able to do it with one less concern over their head," Goulde said. Hopefully, other vendors, such as Sun Microsystems and Microsoft, will be inspired to do what IBM has done, said Goulde.Â  But IBM drew criticism from Sun's Simon Phipps, chief open source officer at the company, in a response posted on Bob Sutor's own blog. "Nice move, Bob, congratulations," Phipps said. "One question, though. Why did you frame this in terms of 'necessary claims?' That leaves a developer wondering if they have done the right things in their code to avoid a patent claim against them." "It leaves them (potentially) to research IBM's patent portfolio in order to get security that the approach they have taken is unavoidably necessary. And it leaves them fearful (reasonably or not) of action against them if they decide to partner with a company or project of which IBM does not approve (the same way the police can always find a law you broke if they want to nail you)," Phipps said. Sun has had equivalent patent pledges but did not limit usage to "essential claims," Phipps said. Microsoft did not provide a response in time for publication of this article. In 2005, IBM opened up access to 500 patents to open-source developers. Patent access also was opened up to health care and education professionals that year.
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Reworks definition of visibility OSBC First you get everyone riled claiming open source and Linux infringe on your patents, then you won't detail those patents. Why? The paperwork.â¦
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You back my patent, I'll back yours. That could be the software giant's motto in its quest for intellectual property.
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Users of the Linux operating system will get patent protection and access to updated Windows Media technology.
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Proposal would set up peer review of patents via wiki before they are submitted to government examiners.
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The latest craze in software: giving stuff away. BEA Systems, Computer Associates and IBM all recently started releasing the source code, or underlying instructions, for some programs, which amounts to distributing those products free. Even the loosest definition of incentive rebates would probably stop short of 100% discounts, but then the economics of software are peculiar (see story, p. 161). The giveaways were celebrated, especially by the noisy "open-source" movement, which wants all software distributed this way. (They're not kidding.)
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U.S. technology vendors submitted five patent applications for last Friday's launch of a Web site that allows the public to review proposals before patents are granted. Less than a week later, the public had submitted claims of previous inventions that could invalidate each one.
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In an attempt to quell increasing criticism over the nation's patent system, the Bush Administration is looking to make changes to require more specific information, and allow the public to comment.
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A patent application turned up by the Associated Press reveals that IBM has proposed an electronic trading system that would enable a new kind of derivatives market for intellectual property. In this market, traders would buy and sell "floating" rights to chunks of a company's IP portfolio, thus becoming not only the recipient of royalties from that portfolio, but the designated defender of those IP rights in court, for a limited period of time.