News and New Products

IBM offers up 500 open-source patents

By Jeff Berman, News Editor -- EDN, 1/13/2005

IBM said this week that it will provide 500 software patents free to open-source developers.

The patents IBM is making available cover dynamic-linking processes for operating systems, file-export protocols, operating systems, databases, and methods for testing programming interfaces, among others. The patents are available to any individual, community, or company working on or using software that meets the Open Source Initiative definition of open-source software, according to IBM.

Making these standards available will help foster technology development among companies and organizations, Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of standards, told EDN.

"We are recognizing that the way people have been making innovations because of the Internet is changing from traditional proprietary information within one company," Sutor said. "And what we have seen in the last 10 to 20 years is a collaborative innovation, for people to connect with anyone in the world. And from a software perspective it is a way to develop new applications and services."

IBM officials are optimistic that this decision will be the foundation for an industrywide patent "commons," in which patents are used to establish a platform for further innovations in areas of broad interest, according to a statement issued Tuesday.

"We need to further stimulate this type of open collaboration," Sutor said. "We are on a path from a closed to open area in terms of the way we develop new things, and because of the benefits it brings, more people with different skills are working better and building better things."

IBM made the range of patents available intentionally broad in order to spur development and innovation, Sutor added.