Alan Hargreaves' Weblog

Patent Grants

I make a point of reading Jonathan's blog whenever he does a new entry. Not simply because I am an employee, but I find he almost always has something interesting to say.

In his latest he dwells a little more on the theme of commoditisation including some interesting references.

However, the part I found particularly interesting is the ps on the end of the item. It appears that all of those who have been commenting on the patent grants (both ours and IBM's) at slashdot and osnews missed this.

I'll quote it verbatim

You've got to love IBM's ability to play the community. Going through some of the patents they "donated" to the open source community a few weeks back, it looks as if they all, curiously, seem to be due for payment - and thus potential expiration - this year. Were they destined for the bit bucket (turns out IBM is among the largest patent expirers in the world, along with its largest issuer).

And some of the patents have nothing to do with open source software - my favorite in the heap is this one. Not sure that's going to be quite the comfort the community's looking for. Here are a few others - for those working in gel embodiments; and for the open source doctors in the crowd.

We know we need to help the community understand how to take advantage of our grant - but at least all 1600 of the patents we've granted to the world were for operating systems and software (USPTO 700, for the wonks in the crowd).

Food for thought.

Posted at 05:52PM Jan 31, 2005 by Alan Hargreaves in General  |  Comments[3]