Patent Liability Insurance

[Andrew C. Oliver]

Sun Tzu says get other people to fight your wars first.  Another 
approach (which I intonated) would be more of a venture capital 
approach.  Those with the cash and the interest could invest it in 
promising litigation companies targeted in the right direction.  I mean 
a 200B lawsuit against those large vendors who strategize in patent 
lawsuits against open source is worth funding strategically for those 
who want to point out the stupidity of the system which hurts their 
interests or for those who have a specific competitive interest based on 
open source.

Maybe that is OIN, maybe it is Red Hat Ventures...

-Andy

Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> Matt Asay wrote:
>> Anyone know how OIN could play in this game of Microsoft's?  Meaning, would
>> open source companies/projects benefit from joining OIN (if that's even
>> possible - looks like a Big Boys club).
> 
> Basically, OIN licenses their patent portfolio to any company that
> agrees not to allege the "Linux System" infringes their patents.  Of
> course, "Linux System" sounds ambiguous and means far more than the
> kernel.  There's a long list at
> http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/pat_linuxdefpop.html of covered
> packages; those packages didn't do anything to get on (they have no
> obligations to OIN).  Now, the big boys you referred to are the ones who
> gave them the patents in that portfolio (since they have some to spare).
>  But OIN apparently accepts patent donations from anyone.
> 
>>  Seems like a good way to get cover
>> against spurious patent claims...?
> 
> It's a start.  I think OIN has a few patents they can use against Microsoft.
> 
> Matt Flaschen


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