Patent pools to the rescue?
When Microsoft first sued TomTom for patent violations in TomTom's Linux-powered navigation devices, I wasn't sure how much of a fight TomTom would put up. Legally TomTom was between a rock and a hard place. You can't use restricted-use patents in GPLed software. If Microsoft just wanted to use the lawsuit as a hostile takeover tactic, TomTom didn't have anything like Microsoft's financial resources to fight them with.
I don't think this materially affects the Microsoft lawsuit, since these OIN patents are not intended to be used for attack, more to remove possible obstacles. It simply emphasises the increasingly alignment of TomTom's interests with those of the wider GNU/Linux community, and represents a nice poke in the eye for Microsoft.
The Eco-Patent Commons has momentum
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The Eco-Patent Commons was launched in January 2008 with the participation of Nokia, Pitney Bowes, and Sony, in addition to IBM.
Later Bosh, Dupont, and Xerox joined, and today WBCSD announced that Ricoh and Taisei joined the commons and Dupont contributed more patents.
The warning sound of TomTom
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[T]hose were the days when Bill Gates could say that software patents had the potential to put the industry at "a complete standstill" and with good reason. If the sort of protection Microsoft now claims for itself had been available to CP/M then, Microsoft would never have created its monopoly, nor amassed a fraction of its power.
Now it has, the rules have changed. Microsoft is perfectly happy, while proclaiming openness and interoperability, to find a company in dire financial straits and then threaten it with expensive legal action over what any self-respecting programmer would identify as a hackish kludge--something that advances the art of computer software not one bit.
The satnav maker announced it had signed up to the OIN on Monday. By joining, it gained access to more than 275 patents and patent applications. In return, it has to open up its own intellectual property to other OIN members, royalty-free.
TomTom has now thrown its name into the ring, and has probably bagged a few more supporters along the way in its noisy legal spat with Microsoft.
The software giant issued a lawsuit against TomTom in late February when it accused the firm of infringing eight of its patents.
Just last week TomTom hit back with a patent claim of its own in which it accused Microsoft’s Streets and Trips products of infringing four patents in the vendor’s vehicle navigation software.