OSDL launches royalty-free patent search

Posted on 15 Nov 2005 at 18:05

The Open Source Development Labs has launched an online service detailing the patents donated to the open-source community by numerous tech companies in one place.

The site, www.patentcommons.org, provides open-source developers a one-stop shop where they can make keyword searches of databases of donated patents to see which are relevant to the field they are interested in.

IBM led the way in patent donations, but many have followed, allowing open-source projects to use certain portions of their portfolios without fear of the owners asserting patent rights against them. The original donors in that sense have been the Linux distributors Red Hat and Novell's SUSE, which have always held a promise not to assert patents rights against open source.

Now the likes of Nokia and Computer Associates have joined the initiative. And once Sun established its CDDL license as OSI-approved, developers had access to the use of its patents, too.

But there's the rub. Donating patents is now an integral part of any company's Linux strategy, but the terms of use can vary, making picking out patents that are safe to use something of a quagmire.

Sun's CDDL is essentially for developers working on its Solaris platform - you can't mix your work licensed under the CDDL with code licensed under the GPL, such as Linux, for example. Nokia's patent terms extend only so far as the Linux kernel, and then places caveats on the potential future direction of the kernel where it might cross into areas that Nokia is less keen on opening up.

This is where the OSDL's online patent commons reference library comes in, detailing not only the patents themselves, but also the terms under which they are available. It will initially detail around 500 patents but this will expand as more vendors enter the arena. The site will also detail other legal solutions that the open-source community can benefit from.

'The OSDL Patent Commons Project is an important first step in helping customers, vendors and the development community understand the different commitments that have been made and how they work to reduce the chances of patent litigation,' said Stuart Cohen, CEO of OSDL.

Recently the Open Innovations Network was announced in a similar vein. Funded by Linux-friendly companies, the OIN will actually acquire patents to create its own portfolio for the benefit of the open-source community.

Cohen told us: 'We view the Open Innovation Network as very complementary to what we're doing. We were well aware of what they were doing beforehand. It's their intention to own patents so they can do cross-licensing with other companies. What we can do is detail patents offered royalty-free.'

Both moves mark a definite change of tack by the open-source community with regards to software patents. Despite a concerted campaign to keep software patents out of draft EU legislation earlier this year, it seems now that with the ongoing success of open-source and Linux, the community has decided to play the patent game after all.

'The reality is that software patents will be available for quite some time and the elimination of them is a long long ways away,' said Cohen.

Author: Matt Whipp