“Under “This step will result in less expensive,
IBM is expanding the scope of its intellectual property
openness. Big Blue has added over 150 key standards specifications and
protocol implementations to its list of items it’s willing to share in an
effort to make software more interoperable.
According to IBM, developers that wanted access to the 150 specifications
and protocols previously needed to acquire a royalty license from IBM. Now
IBM is offering universal and perpetual access to developers.
“This action simplifies and makes more consistent the intellectual property
situation around these important infrastructure specifications,” Bob Sutor,
IBM’s vice president of open source and standards, wrote in a blog post.
“This pledge applies to all implementors of the standards on all platforms.”
Among the standards implementation that IBM is opening up are key Web
services, semantic Web, SOA, XML specifications and protocols. Many of those
protocols and specifications are either up for review or already accepted as
standards by standards bodies such as W3C or OASIS.
So can vendors patent standards?
IBM spokesperson Ari Fishkind said that vendors cannot patent a
standard itself, but there is sometimes technology that a standard may
somehow need or touch on when being implemented.
“Under the rules of many standards bodies, the cooperating vendors must
agree to let anyone use any of their technology related to the standard on a
royalty-free basis,” Fishkind told internetnews.com.
certain and rare conditions, a vendor may still assert their intellectual
property rights. But the typical process of obtaining a royalty-free
license had involved a little bit of formality and bureaucracy. So today’s
pledge makes the possibility of litigation even more remote, and makes it
easier for people to adopt common, open standards.”
Fiskind argued that IBM’s move isn’t just about IBM. He noted that by
saying that anyone who sues anyone, not just IBM, on matters related to that
common standard will lose their privileges. So in effect IBM is encouraging
industry-wide good behavior.
IBM shareholders need not worry about IBM’s apparent philanthropy. Fishkind
noted that IBM wasn’t receiving revenue from these patents anyway because
the IBM technology associated with the specifications and protocols were
available to people on a royalty-free basis.
Over two and a half years ago, IBM issued its open source patent pledge, which offered an IBM commitment not to assert
its open source-related patents. The move to open up the patent usage
surrounding the 150 protocols, according to Fishkind, is because IBM felt the
time was now right since so many people are using Web services to implement
SOA.
“If this accelerates the adoption of SOA, that’s very good as far as we are
concerned,” Fishkind noted.
Professor Eben Moglen founder of the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) is also in favor of opening up of patent usages without licensing restrictions.
“SFLC welcomes IBM’s action, which is a further step by the industry’s
leading patent-holder to restore sanity to the interaction of standards
processes and the inadequately controlled patent system,” Moglen wrote in an
e-mail to internetnews.com.
more capable, higher reliability software that interoperates naturally and
repels monopoly.”
IBM Extends Patent Pledge
