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).