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The Open Invention Network (OIN) is a company that acquires patents and licenses them royalty free to entities which, in turn, agree not to assert their own patents against Linux and Linux-related systems and applications.〔Cover Pages web site, (''Open Invention Network Collects Patents to Promote Royalty-Free Linux'' ), November 11, 2005.〕 ==History== Based in Durham, NC, the company was founded on November 10, 2005 by IBM, Novell, Philips, Red Hat, and Sony. NEC subsequently became a Member. In December 2013, Google became a member. Canonical and TomTom are Associate Members. Keith Bergelt is the chief executive of the company. Bergelt had previously served as President and CEO of Paradox Capital, LLC 〔Open Invention Network web site, (''Management Team'' ). Consulted on June 26, 2008.〕 Open Invention Network has more than 850 U.S. and international patents and patent applications. It holds the Commerce One Web services patents (previously acquired by Novell for $15.5 million), which cover several fundamentals of current business-to-business e-commerce practice. OIN's founders intend for these patents to encourage others to join, and to discourage legal threats against Linux and Linux-related applications. As of December 2013, OIN had more than 650 licensees.〔http://openinventionnetwork.com/press_release10_16_13.php〕 The list of key applications considered by OIN, according to Red Hat's Mark Webbink,〔Mark Webbink in Linux Magazine, (''The Open Invention Network'' ), April 27th 2006.〕 includes Apache, Eclipse, Evolution, Fedora Directory Server, Firefox, GIMP, GNOME, KDE, Mono, Mozilla, MySQL, Nautilus, OpenLDAP, OpenOffice.org, Open-Xchange, Perl, PostgreSQL, Python, Samba, SELinux, Sendmail, and Thunderbird. On March 26, 2007, Oracle licensed OIN's portfolio, thus agreeing not to assert patents against the GNU/Linux-based environment, including competitors MySQL and PostgreSQL when used as part of a GNU/Linux system. On August 7, 2007, Google also joined OIN as a licensee.〔InformationWeek, (''Google To Join Group To Protect Linux From Possible Patent Challenge'' ), August 7, 2007〕 On October 2, 2007, Barracuda Networks joined OIN as a licensee.〔Matt Asay, (''Barracuda Networks: An unsung hero of open source and a new member of Open Invention Network'' ), barracudanetworks.com, In the News, October 2, 2007.〕 On March 23, 2009 TomTom joined OIN as a licensee.〔PRWEB, (''Open Invention Network Extends The Linux Ecosystem As TomTom Becomes Licensee'' ).〕 In May 2011, the European Open Source software manufacturer Univention joined OIN as a licensee. In early September 2009, Open Invention Network acquired 30 patents, from Allied Security Trust, another defensive patent management organization, that had been acquired from Microsoft through a private auction. If the patents had been acquired by patent trolls, they might have caused financial obstacles to Linux developers, distributors and users. OIN was able to avert this issue with the patent acquisition.〔http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125236988735891147.html〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Open Invention Network」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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