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August 11, 2005
OSS Beginning to See The Light on Patents?
This article on ZD Net says that Red Hat and Open Source Developers Labs are looking to finance OSS developer’s efforts at obtaining patents. The patents would presumably be put into a patent pool to protect against potential patent suits.
This is a brilliant move.
One of the best things that could come of this is that more and more ideas will be put into a forum where they can be used more effectively by every party involved. Future patent applicants will have a larger database of ideas against which their applications will be examined, giving their patents a higher quality. OSS developers and their patent holding consortium will have some bargaining power to negotiate with other patent holders in any business deal. More people throughout the industry will begin to understand the business uses of patents, including both business leaders and inventors/developers.
Posted by krajec at August 11, 2005 08:39 AM
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