You heard it right – I’m talking about defending yourself against <spooky music> … patents! This has become the game of the day.
The Allied Security Trust acquires patents that might at a future date be used to attack companies using Linux. Open Invention Network announced recently that it had bought 22 patents that AST had acquired Microsoft Corporation. Once OIN acquires a patent, they release it for use by others.
Some years ago I realized that since the US Patents and Trademarks Office (USPTO) was allowing patents on business processes and software, it was only a matter of time until everything that I do every day when writing programs, would be patented and I would no longer be able to write and sell programs without infringing someone else’s intellectual property. (It would probably be OK to write a program if I kept it secret, but as soon as I try to sell it – kaboom! – the long arm of the law would come down on me.)
In fact, I was an expert witness a few years ago, in a case where a company had patented one of the most basic and key processes related to something that we do every day. Basically if you 1) look at a process and measure it; 2) decide on the basis of measurement what you want to fix or change; and 3) then fix only the things that were wrong… they you would be violating this patent. Holy moly! This is so fundamental you would think it couldn’t be patented. But it was.
And believe it or not, the two companies involved in the dispute settled the case before it went to trial. For tens of millions of dollars. In my opinion, the patent should never have been issued because the fundamental work had been done by someone else in 1973 (not by the person who held the patent). But it had been patented.
The trouble is that even if the patent should never have been granted, it is often more costly to defend yourself, or to get the patent overturned, than it is to settle and pay a ”ransom” to the people who have the patent.
Can you image what the Linux world of open source software would be like if an unscrupulous company — and particularly one which doesn’t actually have any business other than going after people who violate their copyrights — were to patent the basic processes of Linux and then sue everyone to stop them from utilizing the processes?
The business of AST and OIN is to protect us from these nightmares.
