OSCON: Don’t fear patents

PORTLAND. Keith Bergelt CEO of Open Invention Network (OIN) took the OSCON stage this morning with a key message – Patents have a place.

The OIN was launched back in 2005 as a way to collect patents and then make them available under a royalty free grant to open source efforts.

“Patents may either enable or retard open source and Linux, depending on the motivation of the patent owners,” Bergelt said.

The key for Bergelt is to have defensive patents to help protect the open source community against the negative aspects of patents and further SCO-like attacks.

Bergelt argued that defensive publication of patents – good patents that are part of the open source community actually helps to raise the bar for patents overall.

“Intellectual property is not a dirty word and we
need to get the point across that there are ways to codify intellectual property inventions so there
are broader benefits for community and defensive publications are one way.”