The Open Invention Network (OIN) has placed three of the patents involved in the recently settled legal dispute between Microsoft and TomTom, the GPS navigator manufacturer, on the Linux Defenders portal, to throw them open to public investigation for prior art.

Opponents of open source often use the specter of potential patent infringement charges to protect their proprietary turf.

Questions over patent validity in software are never easy to answer, but it's one that a new effort called Linux Defenders from the Open Invention Network (OIN) is trying help solve.

OIN interviews, announcement of "Linux Defenders" and general criticism of this patent strategy

The Open Invention Network, the Software Freedom Law Center, and the Linux Foundation have teamed up to create another tool to defend Linux from patents. It will be hosted by the NYU Peer to Patent folks, where Mark Webbink is now. It is called Linux Defenders, and that would be you, in that they are asking folks to provide prior art to block anyone else from patenting it.

The comments here and elsewhere to my post about iPad alternatives have been mixed. No surprise. There will always be Apple defenders and open source defenders.

A summary of new reports that reveal a brutal, unethical system for information control and monopolies

There's something about patents that infuriates a certain class of software programmer. I know because I used to be one ...

In December, General Patent Corp. announced it was working on behalf of Worlds.com to enforce its patents on "Scalable Virtual World Chat Client-Server System" and "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space," which date back to 1995.

Another roundup of patent news serves as an alarm to Free software defenders