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IBM Gives Patent Access to Open Source Movement

Posted by TimSlavin at January 12, 2005

"Jeff Bates, vice president of editorial operations for the Open Source Technology Group, said the patents will be useful for developers toiling away at creating programs to be distributed free.

But Bates, whose company oversees a number of open-source Web sites,said IBM's donation is also a ``very canny move'' that helps it ``curry favor'' with open-source proponents and the European Union, which is thinking of cracking down on the issuance of many software patents."

From the Boston Herald. The 500 patents IBM is giving away represents 16% of patents IBM won last year, tops for any company in 2004. Still their action could work out well for everyone, assuming the patents are truly useful.

Google News has a page of stories from around the world if you want to dig deeper.
URLs:

http://business.bostonherald.com/technologyNews/view.bg?articleid=63073


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