November 27, 2012 at 23:47Patent Troll Defensive Publication
Open Source is particularly vulnerable to patent claims - open source projects are often created by nonprofit organizations or a small community of enthusiasts who have neither the money nor the time to patent their technical solutions. Rackspace hosting provider uses OpenStack , a set of open virtualization technologies, to create a cloud infrastructure , and legal costs have recently been causing increasing concern.
To protect herself, and at the same time a good and necessary open project OpenStack, Rackspace decided to adopt the strategy of the so-called defensive publication- thoroughly document and publish all technological solutions and algorithms that are used in open software used in the company. Rackspace placed an order on the Elance freelance website to write such documentation.
Applicants are invited to write descriptions of the technical solutions used in OpenStack that meet the requirements of the Priorartdatabase website , which is used by patent examiners to search for existing solutions when checking applications for originality. After the publication of such descriptions, it will no longer be possible to patent them.
At the time, IBM also resorted to defensive publications - from 1958 to 1998, it published the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin. This publication published descriptions of inventions that IBM for some reason could not or did not want to patent, but was afraid that their competitors would patent them. This bulletin has been widely used to search for prior art - in various US patents, references to it are mentioned almost fifty thousand times.
To protect herself, and at the same time a good and necessary open project OpenStack, Rackspace decided to adopt the strategy of the so-called defensive publication- thoroughly document and publish all technological solutions and algorithms that are used in open software used in the company. Rackspace placed an order on the Elance freelance website to write such documentation.
Applicants are invited to write descriptions of the technical solutions used in OpenStack that meet the requirements of the Priorartdatabase website , which is used by patent examiners to search for existing solutions when checking applications for originality. After the publication of such descriptions, it will no longer be possible to patent them.
At the time, IBM also resorted to defensive publications - from 1958 to 1998, it published the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin. This publication published descriptions of inventions that IBM for some reason could not or did not want to patent, but was afraid that their competitors would patent them. This bulletin has been widely used to search for prior art - in various US patents, references to it are mentioned almost fifty thousand times.