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Today, open-source software powers the world. It didn't person to beryllium that way. The Open Invention Network's (OIN) origins are rooted successful a turbulent epoch for unfastened source. In the mid-2000s, Linux faced existential threats from copyright and patent litigation. Besides, the infamous SCO suit and Microsoft's claims that Linux infringed connected hundreds of its patents formed a shadiness implicit the ecosystem.
Business leaders became worried. While SCO's attacks petered out, patent trolls -- formally known arsenic Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) -- were expanding their attacks. So, open-source affable manufacture giants, including IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony, formed the Open Invention Network (OIN) to make a bulwark against patent threats targeting Linux and open-source technologies. Founded successful 2005, the Open Invention Network (OIN) has evolved into a planetary assemblage comprising implicit 4,000 participants, ranging from startups to multinational corporations, collectively holding much than 3 cardinal patents and patent applications.
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At the bosom of OIN's ineligible strategy is simply a royalty-free cross-license agreement. Members hold not to asseverate their patents against the Linux System, creating a almighty web effect that shields open-source projects from litigation. As OIN CEO Keith Bergelt explained, this exemplary enables "broad-based information by ensuring patent hazard mitigation successful cardinal open-source technologies, thereby facilitating open-source adoption."
This attack worked then, and it continues to enactment today.
As much companies realized the worth of unfastened source, they joined successful expanding numbers. Indeed, successful 2018, Microsoft not lone joined the OIN, but the institution besides shocked the satellite by offering its full 60,000 patent portfolio to each of the open-source patent consortium's members.
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Why? Because it made bully concern sense. As Microsoft VP and Deputy General Counsel Burton Davis explained successful 2022: "Microsoft is committed to unfastened source, and continues to put and collaborate crossed the wide open-source landscape. As a beneficiary and progressive subordinate successful the open-source ecosystem, Microsoft is committed to doing its part, unneurotic with the broader open-source community, to support this invaluable assets from patent hazard and different challenges."
Over the years, OIN's ngo has expanded beyond Linux to screen a scope of open-source technologies. Its Linux System Definition, which determines the scope of patent cross-licensing, has grown from a fewer halfway packages to implicit 4,500 bundle components and platforms, including Android, Apache, Kubernetes, and ChromeOS. This enlargement has been critical, arsenic unfastened root has go foundational crossed industries specified arsenic finance, automotive, telecommunications, and artificial intelligence.
OIN's antiaircraft activities spell beyond licensing. The enactment actively neutralizes patent threats done third-party preissuance submissions, prior-art collection, invalidity analysis, and ex parte reexaminations. For example, OIN played a pivotal relation successful helping the GNOME Foundation decision a patent lawsuit from Rothschild Patent Imaging, a notorious patent troll.
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In 2019, OIN joined forces with IBM, Microsoft, and the Linux Foundation to money a multi-million-dollar inaugural with Unified Patents' Open Source Zone, further strengthening defenses against patent trolls targeting open-source software. Together, they onslaught the trolls by arguing that their patents should not person been granted successful the archetypal place. This attack has been successful.
Industry leaders consistently recognition OIN for enabling the open-source revolution. Jim Zemlin, the Linux Foundation's executive director, noted that OIN's enactment has "driven patent extortion successful halfway technologies, which has enabled companies to innovate and put successful technologies that differentiate their products higher successful the bundle stack." Chris Wright, Red Hat's CTO, emphasized that OIN's efforts person "led to unthinkable innovations successful areas similar telecommunications, unreality computing, and AI."
Google's Head of Open Source Programs Office, Anne Bertucio, summed up OIN's contribution: "Open root is astatine the bosom of computing and is captious to however exertion is shared, co-developed, and advanced. OIN's 20 years of enactment person been indispensable successful defending the open-source ecosystem from patent aggressors and protecting the quality to enactment openly."
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As unfastened root expands into caller domains, specified arsenic AI security, automotive, and energy, the OIN volition proceed to turn and guarantee ongoing extortion for the technologies driving our integer economy.
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