IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and the Linux Foundation are teaming up with the Open Invention Network to help protect open-source software projects from so-called patent assertion entities, more colloquially called “patent trolls.”

The OIN is a “patent non-aggression community” that cross-licenses patents to its members on a royalty-free basis. It also has its own patents, which are licensed royalty-free to any organization, so long as they agree not to assert their own patents against its members.

“Open-source development continues to expand into new products and markets, delivering unrivaled innovation,” OIN Chief Executive Officer Keith Bergelt said today. “Its use continues to spread, and patent trolls increasingly look to leverage questionable patents against open source.”

The group’s mandate, he added, is to educate business leaders about the benefits of open-source and shared innovation while also providing a “patent no-fly zone” for Linux and related open-source technologies. The new consortium will do that by supporting Unified Patents’ Open Source Zone with a substantial annual subscription.

Unified Patents is another group made up of more than 200 organizations that takes a much more aggressive stance against patent trolls. Its work involves trying to deter them from taking their cases to court by making it too expensive for them to win. It does that by examining patent trolls and their activities in various technology sectors, and the Open Source Zone is one of those activities.

One of its main initiatives is a public bounty program, which offers substantial prize money for prior art to counter patent trolls. In a recent interview with Martechseries, Unifed Patents CEO Kevin Jakel said those bounties can be worth up to $10,000.

“For example, we recently announced a $10,000 bounty for any prior art relating to network monitoring and sequence integrity,” Jakel said.

Unified Patents recently helped the ride-hailing company Lyft Inc. to defeat a patent troll called RideApp Inc. in court. In this case, it effectively tried to claim it had created all ride-sharing software, but U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar ruled against it. “Given the lack of an algorithm for allocation, RideApp has in effect claimed everything that [performs the task] under the sun,” the judge said in his ruling.

“Linux and open-source technologies have become the backbone of modern computing and the systems we all rely upon,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation. “We see significant value in partnering with OIN, IBM and Microsoft to support Unified Patent’s new Open Source Zone, deterring the activities of patent trolls working against the communities we all depend on.”

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