IBM Offers Its Patents For Free

In a telling shift about how it manages its vast stable of intellectual property, IBM last month revealed plans to make 500 patented technologies available for free to the open-source community. The move, seemingly unprecedented by a commercial IT firm the size of Big Blue, drips with recognition that software development is experiencing a fundamental change, and that the open-source model plays a big part.

Fittingly, it seems, IBM also grabbed top honors for the most U.S. patents earned annually for the 12th consecutive year, according to the U.S. Patent and Trade Office. The company received more than 3,000 U.S. patents in 2004--1,300 more than any other corporation--and has long touted its IP prowess.

The decision to share the technology behind 500 of its patents with the open-source community reflects IBM's belief that the Internet has spawned a model of software development that is more collaborative across disparate entities not necessarily working at the same company, according to Adam Jollans, a Linux technologist and strategist at IBM. The model makes intensive use of shared developer knowledge as well.

"This is a realization that the model of innovation is changing, that it's both collaborative and commercial," Jollans says.

Indeed, IBM has been a leading proponent of Linux, though admittedly its motivations are not entirely altruistic: A significant reason for its Linux support is to sell IBM servers that run on the increasingly popular open-source operating system. Yet, the company also has donated code and other pieces of its software, such as the Eclipse development environment and the Cloudscape database, to open-source projects like Apache.

Under the terms of the latest announcement, IBM holds onto its patents (protecting its own IP), but will provide the innovations they represent as fodder for any individual, community or company that is developing or using software that meets the Open Source Initiative's definition of open source. The patents themselves cover a range of technology inventions, from dynamic linking of operating systems to image processing to storage-related functionality, according to Jollans.

Use of the patented technology will be governed by a legal construct that IBM is calling the Patent Commons, where open-source developers can access those components they need. Jollans says one of IBM's objectives with this move is to spawn other IT vendors to do likewise. One obvious candidate would be Sun Microsystems, which to date has been highly resistant to calls to donate Java to open source.

IBM will not charge royalties for these 500 patents, a significant change from its current patent policy. Jollans says the biggest beneficiaries of its largess will be the numerous open-source projects. Likewise, ISVs and integrators who do custom development will be able to speed their time to market on platforms like Linux by using some of these patented software technologies, he says.

"This is a big benefit to ISVs," Jollans says. "We are seeing a lot of ISVs porting onto Linux and this helps."

Jollans says IBM is considering making more patented technology available. "This won't be limited to software patents."