Open Invention Network
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| Type | Limited liability company |
|---|---|
| Founded | November 10, 2005 |
| Headquarters | New York City, United States |
| Key people | Gerald Rosenthal |
| Industry | Intellectual property |
| Services | Licensing |
| Website | openinventionnetwork.com |
The Open Invention Network (OIN) is a company that acquires patents and licenses them royalty free to entities which, in turn, agree not to assert their own patents against Linux or Linux-related applications.[1]
Based in New York City, the company was founded on November 10, 2005 by IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony. NEC subsequently became a member. Keith Bergelt is the chief executive of the company. Bergelt had previously served as President and CEO of Paradox Capital, LLC [2]
OIN holds the Commerce One Web services patents (previously acquired by Novell for $15.5 million), which cover several fundamentals of current business-to-business e-commerce practice. OIN's founders intend for these patents to encourage others to join, and to discourage legal threats against Linux and Linux-related applications.
The list of key applications considered by OIN, according to Red Hat's Mark Webbink,[3] includes Apache, Eclipse, Evolution, Fedora Directory Server, Firefox, GIMP, GNOME, KDE, Mono, Mozilla, MySQL, Nautilus, OpenLDAP, OpenOffice.org, Open-Xchange, Perl, PostgreSQL, Python, Samba, SELinux, Sendmail, and Thunderbird.
On March 26, 2007, Oracle licensed OIN's portfolio, thus agreeing not to assert patents against the Linux environment, including competitors MySQL and PostgreSQL[4] when used as part of a Linux system. On August 7, 2007, Google also joined OIN as a licensee.[5] On October 2, 2007, Barracuda Networks joined OIN as a licensee.[6] On March 23, 2009 TomTom joined OIN as a licensee.[7]
[edit] See also
- Patent Commons Project
- Patent pool
- Software patent
- Software patent debate
- Software patents and free software
- Open-source software
- Free software
[edit] References
- ^ Cover Pages web site, Open Invention Network Collects Patents to Promote Royalty-Free Linux, November 11, 2005.
- ^ Open Invention Network web site, Management Team. Consulted on June 26, 2008.
- ^ Mark Webbink in Linux Magazine, The Open Invention Network, April 27th 2006.
- ^ Stephen Shankland (2007-03-26). "Oracle bands with open-source patent group". News.com. http://news.com.com/Oracle+bands+with+open-source+patent+group/2100-7344_3-6170717.html. Retrieved 2007-03-27.
- ^ InformationWeek, Google To Join Group To Protect Linux From Possible Patent Challenge, August 7, 2007
- ^ Matt Asay, Barracuda Networks: An unsung hero of open source and a new member of Open Invention Network, barracudanetworks.com, In the News, October 2, 2007.
- ^ PRWEB, Open Invention Network Extends The Linux Ecosystem As TomTom Becomes Licensee.
[edit] External links
- Open Invention Network
- Gartner Research, OIN Will Promote Linux Innovation, but Raises Issues, November 16, 2005
- Webbink, Mark H. The Open Innovation Network. Linux Magazine, April 2006, page 18. Quoted in Open Invention Network (OIN), software patents, and FLOSS
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