Session: The Value of an Open Source Community: A Place Where — as Aristotle said — “Our whole is greater than the sum of our parts.”
Communities are vital not only for Open Source projects, but to the greater Open Source ecosystem. Open Invention Network (OIN) is a free Open Source community and the largest Patent Non-Aggression community in history with over 3,600 global members.
Patent risk for OSS increasingly comes from Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs). PAEs are businesses that acquire patents and seek to generate revenue by asserting them against alleged infringers. They are not operating companies in that they do not develop or sell a product. Because they do not sell a product, PAEs are not themselves at risk from patent infringement claims. Therefore, they will never join OIN and are positioned as a long-term patent threat for Open Source Software (OSS).
OIN operates an aggressive pre-issuance submission program targeting patents of known patent aggressors and founded the Unified Patents Open Source Zone to facilitate the invalidation of PAE patents that read on open source functionality. OIN is also focused on limiting the effect of PAE patents through invalidity charts, prior art collection and sharing, and other programs that will be of benefit to the OIN community in the area of PAE risk.
Attendees will walk away with a deeper understanding:
- About the real-time threat of patent risks & ways to reduce them
- Why litigation towards Open Source programs reached an all-time high of 721 cases in 2021
- The negative impact patent litigation brings to operations.
Presenters:
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