IBM patenting the fine art of patent trolling?
237132
Is IBM seeking to patent the very process for earning money on patents?
476521
2004 in review Did you want fries with that patent?
458139
The dangers of software patents for free software have always been a hot issue.  But with the news that Red Hat and Novell are being sued for alleged patent infringement by IP Innovation, the matter has moved from theory into practice.  In fact, in the battle against software patents, it turns out that the open source world already has a rather powerful weapon in its armoury â even if it's one that few people know about. read more
601322
(InfoWorld) - IBM will publish its patent applications online to share their details with the world and, perhaps, reduce the flood of patent infringement lawsuits. IBM made the change in corporate policy public Tuesday after a two-month long research project this summer involving experts in law, academia, government and technology. The change in policy "is designed to foster integrity, a healthier environment for innovation, and mutual respect for intellectual property rights," IBM said in a statement. It encouraged others in "the patent community" to follow its example. IBM believes that if it is clear and up-front about what technology it is patenting, such disclosure should reduce the risk of patent disputes and lower the chance that its innovations will infringe the patents of others. In this era of technology innovations, the number of patent filings have swelled and government agencies, such as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, have trouble keeping up with applications. "Those systems now deal with growing numbers of questionable patent applications and patent lawsuits," IBM stated. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office makes filings public 18 months after they are submitted and offers only a two-month window for limited public comment on the patents, said IBM spokesman Ari Fishkind, at the technology company's headquarters in Armonk, New York. Under IBM's new policy, the company will establish a six-month window for public comments and encourage more active dialogue about the patents. This will put others on notice of what IBM is planning to patent, but also give other inventors the opportunity to tell IBM that they already hold a patent on what IBM proposes to patent, Fishkind said. "This is a way to get more people involved, like in an open source community," he said. The policy is intended to make IBM patent applicants responsible for the quality and clarity of their applications and to clearly establish ownership of the patent. IBM also contends that business methods that don't have particular technical merit should not be patentable. The patent policy was developed by a panel of about 50 experts working throughout May and June in a collaborative process conducted on an online wiki. A wiki is a Web site at which several people have the ability to write and edit a document online. "The intellectual property regime in this country is not functioning in the best interests of society and of innovators," said Steven Weber, a professor of international studies and political science at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of the group that developed the policy. The volume of patent litigation has grown with the growth of new technology innovations and the tendency of courts to expand the definition of what can be patented, Weber said. There have also been instances in which companies have used vague patent language as leverage to sue others for patent infringement and reap millions in settlements. If the patent process is more open, the risk of litigation will be lower, which saves all parties money spent on litigating patent disputes. "Litigation is a dead weight loss" on everybody, Weber said.
519167
Two years ago, IBM was ordered to produce the source code for its products, which Compuware identified as containing its pirated intellectual property. The code was missing. But lo and behold -- last week, they called and said they had it,&quot; ...
54701
Microsoft is applying for a patent for an operating system that starts out crippled.  You must pay to do things like take the throttle off network speed, disk access, install drivers, install software, and more.  Trust me, I rarely even visit Groklaw, even if this is my second consecutive blog entry with a link to a Groklaw article. My VarLinux.org readers posted the article, A Brave New Modular World, and I had to share it.
312907
IBM (NYSE: IBM) has -- again -- sought to have the pending legal claims by The SCO Group dismissed. According to a motion it filed in a U.S. district court, IBM argues that SCO has no evidence to support its claims that it appropriated confidential source code from Unix System V and placed it in Linux.
454933
IBM will publish its patent applications online to share their details with the world and, perhaps, reduce the flood of patent infringement lawsuits.
58339
Google has an idea so novel that it should patent it.
707972
Big Blue's decision to open patents to public scrutiny could spur innovation.
320193
It's obvious that what's obvious should be made obvious The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of KSR International v. Teleflex, in which the limits of combination patents and so-called obvious patents are being considered. According to several wire reports, KSR argued that its design for adjustable vehicle accelerator pedals does not violate a patent held by Teleflex for a similar gizmo, because Teleflex did not legitimately invent anything when it combined two existing technologies in an obvious way, and does not, therefore, deserve the patent.â¦
21257
According to a recent report from a research group, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer at an Asian Government Leaders Forum in Singapore claimed that Linux violates more than 228 patents.
184683
A effort by a Seattle company at Black Hat DC to demo a device that easily hacks data from a popular RFID-based ID card system has been met by a patent-infringement claim. Meanwhile, legislators attempt to wrap laws around the security issues.
368060
The Story: What?s in a name? Back in the days of the Gingrich revolution, the nastiest label you could pin on a politician was ?liberal.? And now that open source has become an essential technology, the quickest way to get a rise out of an open source executive (and to get flamed on dozens of blogs) is to say his or her company is ?commercial.?[ Slideshow: 2007's top underreported tech stories ]                                                    No matter what you call them, open source companies have been steadily integrating parts of the hated commercial software subscription model into their business. First it was support, and now it is software access. Say it ain?t so, Linus.MySQL, for example, will charge users of its enterprise edition to use the code, not just for support as has been the traditional open source business model. ?We are looking for ways to extend our offerings in a way that can be monetized,? bluntly says Kaj Arno, the company?s VP for community.Chander Kant, founder of the open source storage software company Zmanda, is likewise frank about the need to drive revenue. Speaking of the open source community as a whole, he says, ?We are not a charity. We need to monetize.?Recognizing that charging to use open source software flies in the face of the original open source premise of freely sharable code open to everyone, Arno is quick to note that the paid version of Workbench has code and features not found in the free version ? and that the free version ?is not crippled.? Arno calls the move an experiment, and acknowledges that MySQL needs to move carefully to avoid upsetting the often quick-tempered open source community.Is this a trend? Red Monk analyst Stephen O?Grady says it is: ?Ultimately when you look at a high-profile firm like MySQL embracing it, it?s difficult to conclude anything else.?InfoWorld blogger (and IBM employee) Savio Rodrigues notes another example. In a recent blog post, he looked at changes to JBoss since it was purchased by Red Hat Software and concluded: ?The Fedora/JBoss subscription is just like the software subscription business model that commercial software vendors have been using for decades.?Does that mean a company that adopts the usage-based pricing model isn?t really open-source? That?s an interesting point, since as Zmanda?s Kant acknowledges, ?the litmus test of open source is control of the code.? Open source software delivered through appliances keeps the access ? and thus control ? away from users, he notes. But code binaries distributed as software remain open to their users ? for now, at least.The Bottom Line: Have MySQL and Red Hat run away from the principles of open source? Who cares. The real point is that the open source business model is evolving away from the ?free? model and toward an alternative development approach for commercial software. If you adopted open source due to its cost, you may not save as much as you thought. If you adopted open source for the access to source code or the community-supported development approach that is supposed to result in better software, it?s not yet clear if the greater commercialization will enhance those aspects or drive away the true believers and make open source no different than the old-fashioned commercial offerings.Complete list of 2007 underreported stories: 1.? Java is becoming the new Cobol 2.? Sun Microsystems is back in the game 3.? Hackers take aim at Mac OS X 4.? There are some threats you can worry less about 5.? Companies may have found a way around H-1B visa limits 6.? Open source?s new commercial strategy 7.? End-to-end Ethernet finally arrives 8.? Blade servers arrive for the masses 9.? BI is dead; long live BI 10. Balance of power shifts to software buyers
171642
Conflicts with European law, they say A group of small British businesses has mounted a challenge to changes made by the Intellectual Property Office's (formerly known as the Patent Office) to the scope of the monopoly a patent holder can be granted for a software patent.â¦
667655
IBM (NYSE: IBM) is taking the wraps off of its proprietary software technology, releasing 500 patents to open source developers and challenging its I.T. competitors to follow suit.
203087
I&#8217;m playing the devil&#8217;s advocate here, so keep that in mind in case I end up trampling all over anything you hold dear :) Google has taken a lot of flak on a lot of issues in the past few years - it&#8217;s a price an industry leader invariably has to pay.  Apart from Blogger spam [...]