

IBM: Back to the Bad Old Days? - ESR - billswift
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1889#more-1889

======
alec
"Crucially, two of those were patents that IBM explicitly promised never to
raise against open source."

What sort of weight does that promise carry? It's hard not to draw parallels
to the .NET patent discussion. Maybe these sorts of promises don't mean
anything because they still have enough related patents to sink a free
software project.

~~~
tzs
The promise is legally binding. IBM has no chance of winning an infringement
suit over those two patents against an open source project as defined in their
pledge here: <http://www.ibm.com/ibm/licensing/patents/pledgedpatents.pdf>

It's highly likely that their inclusion of those two patents in the list of
150+ they say TurboHercules might be infringing is an oversight, and if they
file suit and include those, the defendants will have no trouble getting a
summary judgement throwing them out.

Not that this will help much--IBM has made no such promise about the other
150+ patents.

------
wendroid
No ESR, the Bad Old Days was when IBM did the IT for the Third Reich.

<http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/>

