Good To See: Blockstream Promises Not To Abuse Patents

from the more-companies-should-do-this dept

Mon, Aug 1st 2016 4:00pm — Mike Masnick

Over the years, we've discussed various examples of tech companies taking a stand against patent abuse. That is, in lieu of actual patent reform to fix a broken system, some companies are doing things on their own (we even had a podcast discussing a bunch of examples). One of my personal favorites was Twitter's Innovator's Patent Agreement which effectively lets the named inventors on the patent issue their own licenses to undermine trolls should the patents ever fall into trollish hands. Think of it as something of a poison pill to make the patents worth a lot less to pure trolls. One of the tricks though has been convincing smaller startups to take some of these steps -- even the license on transfer network, which is sort of a no brainer for startups. So it's good to see, as pointed out by EFF, that Blockstream, a fascinating company in the blockchain space that employs a ton of super smart people, take a big commitment to be a good player in the patent realm..

As detailed by the EFF, Blockstream's plan has three components -- all of which are good:

It adopted a patent pledge promising that it will only use its own software patents defensively — that is, it won’t use them to sue or demand licensing fees others for using similar technologies, but it may use them to defend itself from the patent lawsuits of others.

It shared its patents under the Defensive Patent License (DPL), licensing its patents to any other person or company who agrees to the terms of the DPL.

It introduced a modified version of the Innovator’s Patent Agreement, an agreement with Blockstream inventors that it may file patents for their inventions but may not use them offensively (if Blockstream ever assigns a patent to another party, the agreement would apply to that party too).

Hopefully as we see companies like Blockstream commit to these kinds of things, it will inspire more startups to do similar things.

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Filed Under: bitcoin, blockchain, non-aggression, patents
Companies: blockstream

11 Comments

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Daydream, 1 Aug 2016 @ 9:10pm

This is another one of those things that shouldn't be news...
Like 'court suppresses illegally obtained evidence' or 'big company supports fan production'.

What sort of society do we live in that a company agreeing to not do unethical things for financial gain is noteworthy?
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JNG, 1 Aug 2016 @ 10:18pm

That's hilarious.

Your realize Mikey, that Blockstream not only has no patents, it doesn't even have any published pending patent applications? Their promise is about as meaningful as a women with no ovaries "promsing" not to get pregnant. You folks are such predictable stooges for anything anti-IP and will lap up any pablum that's flavored the right way.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2016 @ 2:07am

All these pledges are fine, until a Larry Ellison like person gains control of the company and see an opportunity to attack their competitors.
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Ninja (profile), 2 Aug 2016 @ 4:51am

Re:
And you IP morons are very different, right? Never released any biased, factless studies or data, never paid people to parrot your debunked points... Saints you people are, SAINTS.

As for the fact that it seemingly doesn't have patents, at some point Google didn't have either. You can't predict how things will be in the future and a pledge now may be of great help to everybody. So shut up and go back to your cave.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2016 @ 6:36am

Re: Re:
Ninja made an interesting comment regarding Google.

As it turns out, Google filed its first patent application three years after it was incorporated, so his statement that "at some point Google didn't have [any patents] either" is correct.

As of today, 18 years after it was incorporated and 13 years after its first patent issued, Google has more than 12,000 issued U.S. patents with hundreds more pending.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2016 @ 6:37am

Re:
"promising that it will only use its own software patents defensively"

This sounds familiar, hmmmmm
What was the name of that patent collecting organization that promised to only use their patents for defensive puposes?

Perhaps Nathan Myhrvold could help us remember .... oh yeah - it's Intellectual Ventures! Remember them? What are they doing now with all those patents?
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Wendy Cockcroft, 2 Aug 2016 @ 7:22am

Re: This is another one of those things that shouldn't be news...
"You are worth what the market says you're worth."

When that is the prevailing standard, expect shenanigans.
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JNG, 2 Aug 2016 @ 8:34am

Re: Re: Re:
That's not quite accurate; GOOGLE's patent on PageRank was filed by Page long before they were incorporated:

https://www.google.com/patents/US6285999?dq=6285999&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi 5m8K3haPOAhUDKGMKHWpHAcQQ6AEIHjAA

Google had to take a license from Stanford as part of their business; and you can darn well know Stanford did not have any weird non-enforcement provisions

http://www.ipnav.com/blog/google-algorithm-earns-337-million-for-stanford/

Thus while their home-grown stuff came later, they had the benefit of solid IP protection from day 1. And, btw, Stanford spins off dozens of companies a year, but makes no "pledges" with their IP of course as that would render it useless, or, about as valuable as the non-existent IP offered by Blockstream.
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That One Guy (profile), 2 Aug 2016 @ 10:08am

Re:
The point of the pledges is to protect against something like that, making it much more difficult to use the patents offensively.

If they've got it down in writing that they won't sue over their patents, and somewhere down the line they do, then the target would have at the least a decent defense pointing to the original pledge and claiming that they only used the patents because they were told they wouldn't be sued.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 Aug 2016 @ 2:02pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
You got me there. I was only looking at Google's patents and not what others were doing before Google. So, while Google may not have had any patents itself "at some point," as alleged by Ninja, they apparently had a license to at least one patent from day 1. Essentially, Google always had patents.
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John Fenderson (profile), 3 Aug 2016 @ 6:29pm

Re: Re:
If a company is bought out, the only thing that matters is existing contracts. I'm not sure there are many judges who would consider a "pledge" as having any real weight.

And if the pledge does get in the way, it wouldn't stop the company from selling the patents to someone else who aren't bound by any pledge.
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