Posts Tagged: "Open Source"

Patently Strategic Podcast: Open Source and Patent Rights

Use of free open-source code can be a massive accelerant when building complex software applications. Why reinvent wheels? And depending on resources and budget, sometimes it’s the only practical way. But like with most things, free often isn’t really free. The cost is just transferred somewhere else. When it comes to open source, these short-term savings can have significant long-term consequences for your intellectual property rights. For some licenses, if open-source is included and combined with other proprietary software, the combination of that software becomes bound by the open-source license terms. This viral, infectious attribute can have profound implications for code intended to be proprietary and protected. Consequences can include being required to release your code to the public domain as open source, automatic patent licenses for other users of the open source, and an inability to assert patent rights against infringers of your invention.

We Need an Open-Source Approach to Weed Out Bad Quality Patents

Much has been written about patent quality. But many authors approach this problem with a bias against the very idea of a patent system. These critics would “solve” the patent quality problem by cutting down the total number of issued patents rather than focusing on problem patents. They suggest increasing examiners and examination time will weed out bad quality patents. And this might throw up additional roadblocks to inventors obtaining a patent by increasing the time and cost of securing an allowance. But this does not necessarily improve patent quality. Instead, it merely reduces the total number of patents issued. Rather than “more examination,” solutions to the patent quality problem need to focus on “better examination.” In theory, “better examination” should stop invalid claims from ever getting issued while simultaneously streamlining allowance for valid claims.

Limiting the Impact of Patent Assertion Entities on the Open Source Community

There has been a great deal of discussion over the years regarding patent trolls, also known as non-practicing entities (NPEs) and Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs). As most of the IP world knows, these organizations, either alone or in partnership with an inventor, look to leverage a patent or a portfolio in order to seek financial return from companies allegedly utilizing the technology. On the other side are organizations that have in many cases advanced and refined the base technology and created products therefrom who are seeking a way out of potentially high litigation costs by working to determine the need to potentially license the patent/portfolio or to fight patent infringement claims if the PAE has moved beyond assertion to litigation.

Your Developers Could Be Publicly Disclosing Source Code By Using Third-Party Code Repositories

Recently, I met with a potential client to discuss key points that developers and management should keep in mind in taking the first steps to begin developing a patent portfolio. One aspect of the presentation was public disclosures that began the one-year grace period for filing for patent protection. As I was preparing examples, a practical concern emerged; specifically, whether storing source code in a third-party code repository amounted to a public disclosure or a printed publication. My research revealed that there are certain instances where uploading source code to a third-party repository amounted to a public disclosure or a printed publication, but there were precautions that developers and companies could take to prevent the inadvertent public disclosure of their code.

Understory Earns U.S. Patents for Weather Sensing Technology

Understory’s first patent covers the sensor device itself which consists of a stainless steel sphere sitting on top of a shaft, a configuration which one of the sensor’s designer called “God’s joystick.” “The sensor detects microdeflections from rain or hail pushing on the joystick,” Kubicek said. Such measurements take place on the order of 50,000 times each second and algorithms processed at the device separates each microdeflection into a data point which can be sent to a cloud-based network of weather data… One has to wonder though whether the Federal Circuit and Supreme Court, when they might get their hands on these patents, will find them to be directed to nothing more than an abstract idea. After all, sensing the weather has been done since at least the dawn of recorded history.