Comment by shawnreilly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shawnreilly | Hacker News Reader

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At the last Startup Weekend Honolulu 2014, I introduced my approach towards solving this problem; The Open Patent Foundation (Non-Profit). Similar to concepts such as Creative Commons, and Open Source Software Licenses, the idea is to create Open Patent License(s) that standardize a method to share intellectual property with the Community. While this does not directly solve the problem, I think it is a necessary first step towards realizing that we (as a Community) can leverage the existing broken Patent System in a way that favors us (the Community). Not only does this have the potential to accelerate innovation, it will also prevent Patent Trolls from claiming ownership of innovations, and that's a big deal. These Trolls currently use a Licensing approach to extort people (pay our Licensing Fee or else we will sue). I think it would be ironic (and awesome) to use the same approach to effectively null Patent Trolls. Considering how ineffective Legal Reform is, this might be our best bet; To come together collectively as a Community and decide that we want to take a stand and start using the System in a new and different way. It would be a double win, accelerate innovation and null Patent Trolling. If this sounds interesting, the website is http://www.openpatentfoundation.com and I recently moved to Mountain View, so I'm looking to spend more time on this and see if we can get some Community Support.

How is that different from OIN [1]?

[1] http://www.openinventionnetwork.com/ «The Open Invention Network is a shared defensive patent pool with the mission to protect Linux. Launched in 2005, OIN has strong industry support with backing from Google, IBM, NEC, Philips, Red Hat, Sony and SUSE (a business unit of Novell). Any company, project or developer that is working on Linux, GNU, Android or any other Linux-related software is welcome to join OIN, free of charge or royalties.»

The underlying concepts and the approach are very similar. The idea of a non-assertion pledge (or defensive patent pool) is a refreshing example of forward thinking Businesses and Organizations that recognize the adverse effects that Patent Trolling has on innovation. Google is a great example [1]. The Open Patent Foundation takes this concept, and applies it with a different approach. Instead of choosing a specific focus or scope, we want to allow the Community (as a whole) to drive the creation of Open Patent License(s). The end result would be a set of Licenses that any Person or Organization could use and apply towards any Intellectual Property or Patents they may own. So some of them may end up being specific to Software. others may end up being specific to Utility Patents. And yet others might end up being non-specific in terms of application, but specific to a Time Period, or perhaps Distribution Guidelines. It would be up to the Community to decide what we want to use, and that is what (IMO) makes the entire concept so powerful. It is not implied to be a better approach, just a new one. In the end, all of these types of movements are positive. The end goal is to accelerate innovation and stop Patent Trolling.

http://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/

Cross-licensing and other "we won't sue you if you don't sue us" foundations get created at the rate of about one a year.

If the previous iterations all failed to do anything meaningful, why do you believe that starting yet another iteration will do something meaningful?

I would not agree that previous iterations have failed to do anything meaningful. It is very hard to gauge the success of a non-assertion pledge or defensive patent pool. For example, if you take Google's Pledge of MapReduce related patents, one could argue that Google has helped accelerate innovation in the Big Data space. The resulting Businesses and Products, and their resulting Revenues and Market Caps could possibly be considered data points indicating success. The same could be said for the Open Invention Network and Linux, which has accelerated innovation in Infrastructure, Security, and many other industries. The problem is, it's hard to measure this success, and in many cases the benefits are not realized for quite some time.

I believe that the Open patent Foundation has the potential to do something meaningful because the Community will determine the scope, focus, and relating Licenses. This creates the potential to positively impact a large range of industries. This could apply to Technology, Software, Medicine, Energy, and many other industries where Patent Trolling or similar extortion related tactics have stalled innovation. The concept of an Open Patent License won't stop Patent Trolling overnight. But it will give the Community a standardized method to share future innovations, effectively providing the potential to accelerate innovation over time (from Today moving forward).

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