According to a report published online by the Wall Street Journal, the Open Invention Network (OIN) has announced plans to purchase 22 former Microsoft patents.

Enjoy the third installment in our series of video-taped talks with the iconic Alan Cox. Afterwards, in case you need a catch-up, you can hear Alan talk about community and the enterprise or the state of free software in our video archives.

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.

Mark Webbink becomes the Executive Director of Peer to Patent; Finjan and Blackboard reappear

Software patent law is not for the faint hearted. Now the FSF has funded a new video where top hackers and legal experts explain where the idea came from and just why it is so bad for free software. With increasing evidence that patents harm, rather then help, innovation, is the tide beginning to turn against software patents?

KDE e.V. is pleased to announce that we have joined the Open Invention Network community as a licensee. Open Invention Network was founded as a way to help defend the Linux ecosystem, and by extension much of the Free and Open Source software world, from the risks associated with software patents.

Open Invention Network has announced it has decided to look for prior art on three of the Microsoft patents that were used in the TomTom litigation: Open Invention NetworkSM (OIN), a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux, today announced that U.S.

This week Mark Webbink, former Red Hat General Counsel discusses software patents, their absurdity and the business climate and “judicial activism” that helped create them.

There have been many claims over the purchase of 22 patents by the Open Invention Network. Some have lauded the cunning of OIN in snatching the patents away from patent trolls. Others suggest the OIN have acquired useful defensive patents. The trouble is that the process of acquiring the patents is relatively opaque.