IBM pledges access to its IP for standards
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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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A data format used in Microsoft Corp.'s prevalent Office software line has been approved as an international standard &#151; a move aimed at preserving access to documents created with the package for years to come.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- IBM and PeopleSoft on Tuesday announced that PeopleSoft will standardize its applications on core IBM middleware products and that both companies will market the joint solutions.
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IBM Corp. said Monday it will release as open source code some of its software for speech-enabling applications. The move is intended to spur development in the field and outflank rivals by making IBM's free technology the industry standard.
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(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.
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NEW YORK: IBM said that it is making the design of its âbladeâ computer servers widely available, in a move designed to gain wider acceptability in data centres and the telecom industry.
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IBM is using a microcontroller from National Semiconductor that stores passwords, digital certificates and encryption keys.
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The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is meeting this week to address critical issues like new generic top level domains, internationalized domain names, and other subjects.
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Computer giant IBM says 500 of its software patents will be released into the open development community.
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IT vendors are championing highly integrated and flexible systems through offerings such as IBM's 'on-demand computing' initiative and HP's 'adaptive enterprise' strategy. But what's really important, users say, is support for open standards.
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Software giant hopes to convince governments that its products are secure.
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Amid intense lobbying, Microsoft is expected to squeak out a victory this week to have its open document format, Office Open XML, recognized as an international standard.
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IBM is hoping to provide commercial-level technical support to developers building applications using Eclipse open-source tools.
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Manufacturers plan to start adding IP capability to new home communication and entertainment products.
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The WS-Management spec is part of the effort to improve Sun-Microsoft system interoperability. But IBM is taking a different road.
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Software giant plans to submit its HD Photo image format to a standards body as a higher-quality replacement for today's ubiquitous JPEG standard.
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Looking to avoid the costly fragmentation that stifled the Unix market, members of the Free Standards Group have announced a new version of a critical Linux standard that many of its proponents hope will cement the future for the open-source operating