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April 11, 2005

I.B.M. is giving away its patents for free

Interesting article in Monday’s New York Times Technology Section entitled I.B.M. Hopes to Profit by Making Patents Available Free.  Apparently, IBM has found a way to make money giving away its intellectual property.

Diverging from conventional wisdom, the company has calculated that sharing technology can sometimes be more profitable than jealously guarding its property rights on patents, copyrights and trade secrets. The moves by I.B.M., the world's largest supplier of information technology services and computers, are being closely watched throughout the business world.

Earlier this year, I.B.M. made a broad gesture toward what it called a new era in how it controls intellectual property. It announced in January that it would make 500 patents - mainly for software code that manages electronic commerce, storage, image processing, data handling and Internet communications - freely available to others.

And it pledged that more such moves would follow.

This month, the company said that all of its future patent contributions to the largest standards group for electronic commerce on the Web, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, would be free.

While they are giving it away for free – maybe they will make it up in volume.

Posted by Douglas Sorocco at 01:24 AM.
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