Few days ago news broke that D-Link has been listed inside of the number of participants in the organization of Open Invention the Network (OIN), which is a Linux ecosystem protected by patent claims.
It should be noted that more than 70% of the products D-Link Communications and Networking are initially implemented with open source software. The company continues to advocate for open source software and patent non-aggression, and is committed to contributing to the OIN community to drive innovation.
The members by OIN agree not to file patent claims and they are free to authorize the use of proprietary technologies in projects related to the Linux ecosystem.
OIN members include more than 3.300 businesses, communities, and organizations who have signed license agreements to share patents. Among the main participants of OIN, providing the formation of a group of patents that protects Linux, companies such as Google, IBM, NEC, Toyota, Renault, SUSE, Philips, Red Hat, Alibaba, HP, AT&T, Juniper, Facebook, Cisco, Casio, Huawei, Fujitsu, Sony and Microsoft.
"More than 70% of D-Link communication and networking solutions have implemented open source software since the initial research and development phase," explained Mark Chen, president of D-Link. "We have and will continue to advocate for OSS and patent non-aggression, and we look forward to making our contributions to the OIN community to foster innovation."
“We are pleased that D-Link is using open source code in its products and we welcome its commitment to patent non-aggression in the Linux kernel and the adjacent open source technologies required under the OIN license.
The dissemination of a common set of values in terms of patent risk mitigation together with a broader adoption of rigorous compliance management processes creates a context for the governance of the intellectual property that OIN fosters among all members of its community « said Keith Bergelt, CEO of the Open Invention Network.
Signatory companies obtain access to patents held by the OIN in exchange for the obligation not to sue for the use of technologies used in the Linux ecosystem.
Among other things, as part of joining the OIN, Microsoft transferred to OIN participants the right to use more than 60 of its patents, pledging not to use them against Linux and open source software.
The agreement between OIN members applies only to components of the distributions which fall under the definition of a Linux system.
The list currently includes 3393 packages, including Linux kernel, Android platform, KVM, Git, nginx, Apache Hadoop, CMake, PHP, Python, Ruby, Go, Lua, LLVM, OpenJDK, WebKit, KDE, GNOME, QEMU, Firefox, LibreOffice, Qt, systemd, X.Org, Wayland, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.
In addition to non-aggression obligations, for additional protection within the OIN, a patent pool has been formed, which includes patents bought or donated by Linux-related participants.
OIN's patent pool includes more than 1300 patents. Including OIN Hands is a group of patents, involving one of the first reference technologies creating dynamic web content that anticipated occurrence systems such as Microsoft's ASP, Sun / Oracle's JSP, and PHP.
Another significant contribution is the 2009 acquisition of 22 Microsoft patents., which were previously sold to the AST consortium as patents for 'open source' products. All OIN members have the opportunity to use these patents for free.
The validity of the OIN agreement was confirmed by the decision of the United States Department of Justice, which required that the interests of OIN be considered in the terms of the agreement on the sale of Novell's patents.
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