| By Oracle News Desk |
Article Rating: |
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| March 31, 2007 03:30 PM EDT |
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9,377 |
Oracle, which of course
has Linux ambitions - and anti-Red Hat ones at that - has become a
licensee of the Open Invention Network (OIN), the non-profit IP
house set up by IBM to acquire patents and make sure they're
available royalty-free to Linux.
The real idea is to amass critical
IP that could be used offensively against anybody - (and you know
who you are) - that would dare to charge Linux with patent
infringement.
So in return for royalty-free use,
licensees promise not to assert any of their patents against
Linux. Basically mutual deterrence.
OIN is funded by NEC, Novell,
Philips, Red Hat and Sony as well as IBM, all of which are also
licensees.
OIN claims to have accumulated 100
patents and patent applications. It calls them
"strategic." How strategic is unclear since it's never
disclosed which ones they are.
OIN is known to hold what are
supposed to be seminal and emasculating Commerce One e-commerce
patents that Novell secretly bought at auction after Commerce One
went down for the count. Novell gave them to OIN as part of its
dowry.
Of course they'd have to stand up
in court.
Oracle News Desk trawls the world's news information sources and brings you timely updates on Oracle and its ever-expanding enterprise software portfolio, including its entire range of tools for managing business data, supporting business operations, and facilitating collaboration and application development.
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