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posted by martyb on Wednesday October 10 2018, @10:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the what's-the-catch dept.

Microsoft open-sources its patent portfolio

By joining the Open Invention Network, Microsoft is offering its entire patent portfolio -- with the legacy exception of its Windows and desktop application code -- to all of the open-source patent consortium's members.

Before Microsoft joined, OIN had more than 2,650 community members and owns more than 1,300 global patents and applications. OIN is the largest patent non-aggression community in history and represents a core set of open-source intellectual-property values. Its members include Google, IBM, Red Hat, and SUSE. The OIN patent license and member cross-licenses are available royalty-free to anyone who joins the OIN community.

This is maybe the biggest Microsoft news since Microsoft "acquired" The Linux Foundation nearly two years ago in Nov 2016.

Also at Ars Technica.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:39AM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 11 2018, @01:39AM (#747240) Journal

    All the largest corporations agree not to sue each other. But, the little guy with a cool idea? Fair game to all members.

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:39AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:39AM (#747335) Homepage
    Yeah, when people like sony and microsoft sit at the table with a pile of patents in front of them, saying "we can all play nicely together here, can't we .... /can't we/ >wink< ?" the first thing that goes through my mind is the GSM mafia. That "community" I know, from having worked in a 2nd-3rd-division telecomms company, would happily knee-cap anyone that dared to try to muscle their way into their fruity little gang. (We had 2nd-division customers, we were a consultancy who could sell everything from h/w to app-layer, so customers could do as little or as much of it as they wanted, but i don't know if we could really consider ourselves 2nd division.) Several of our customers were Jimmy Hoffa'd when they came up with just a small number of clever patents in a particular sub-field. (Directonal antennae that only radiate away from your head - invented in Denmark, by one of our (s/w) customers, but killed by the GSM mafia.)

    But the dinosaur in the room is the "exception of its Windows and desktop application code" - which is probably about 99.9% of microsoft's IP.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves