La Open Invention Network (OIN), which aims to protect the Linux ecosystem from patent claims, has announced that it is expanding its list of covered packages by a patent-free agreement and by making some patented technologies available for free.
The list of distribution components that fall under the definition of a Linux system ("Linux System"), which is covered by the agreement between the OIN members, it has been expanded to 520 packages.
It must be remembered that the Open Invention Network was the one who helped Gnome to carry out the demand that Rothschild Patent Imaging imposed at the time.
In September of last year the unprecedented event, in which a company named Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC disclosed a demand towards GNOME, in which she was accused of patent infringement 9,936,086 in the Shotwell photo manager.
The patent in which Rothschild Patent Imaging LLC made its claim, is dated 2008 and describes a technique for wirelessly connecting an image capture device (phone, webcam) a an image receiving device (computer) and then selectively transmit images with filtering by date, location and other parameters.
The work is not over and the catalog continues to grow
New packages included in the list include the controller exFAT, KDE Frameworks, Hyperledger, Apache Hadoop, Robot OS (ROS), Apache Avro, Apache Kafka, Apache Spark, Automotive Grade Linux (AGL), Eclipse Paho, and Mosquito.
In addition, Android platform components listed now include an Android 10 version in a state that matches the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) open repository.
As a result, Linux system definition covers 3393 packagesIncluding Linux kernel, Android platform, KVM, Git, nginx, CMake, PHP, Python, Ruby, Go, Lua, LLVM, OpenJDK, WebKit, KDE, GNOME, QEMU, Firefox, LibreOffice, Qt, systemd, X.Org, Wayland, PostgreSQL, MySQL, etc.
The number of license-sharing patent OIN signatories has exceeded 3.300 businesses, communities, and organizations.
"The proliferation of Linux and open source software accelerates the pace of innovation across industries as software becomes an increasingly important source of differentiation," said Keith Bergelt, CEO of the Open Invention Network. “This expansion of the Linux system allows OIN to keep pace with open source innovation, promoting patent nonaggression at the kernel. As open source grows, we will continue the measured expansion of the Linux system while recruiting more companies in the OIN community to further mitigate the patent risk associated with using open source code.
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.
Between the main OIN participants, providing the formation of a group of patents that protects Linux, companies like Google, IBM, NEC, Toyota, Renault, SUSE, Philips, Red Hat, Alibaba, HP, AT&T, Juniper, Facebook, Cisco, Casio, Huawei, Fujitsu, Sony and Microsoft.
For example, Microsoft, which has joined the OIN, has pledged not to use more than 60.000 of its patents against Linux and open source software.
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 the occurrence of systems like Microsoft's ASP, Sun / Oracle's JSP, and PHP.
Another significant contribution is the acquisition in 2009 of 22 Microsoft patents, previously sold to the AST consortium, as patents affecting "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 taken into account in the terms of the agreement on the sale of Novell's patents.