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both as a software development and as a business model. Governments should
ensure a level playing field for both software development models.
While we recognises the legitimate rights of intellectual property rights owners,
we regret recent incidents of patent holders abuse and unsubstantiated use of
their rights against open source/free software developers.
A recent development, which deserves the careful attention from the
Commission, is the use of unsubstantiated threats of intellectual property rights
infringements against those who attempt to develop interoperable software
products. As an example, a major software company has publicly stated that it
believes Linux and other open source software infringes 235 of its patents, but
has never identified any of these patents.
Vague claims by patent holders that open source software may infringe their
patent rights should be obliged to identify supposedly infringed patents or cease
to make unsubstantiated allegations. This would prevent patents from being
invoked to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt (“FUD”) against open source
software products in the minds of both developers and users. The behaviour of
creating FUD against open source software solutions should not be tolerated, as it
amounts to an anticompetitive strategy aimed at distorting conditions in the
marketplace to the detriment of OSS products.
[COMMENT: WE DISAGREE WITH SEVERAL POINTS IN THIS SECTION.
THIS PAPER SHOULD NOT ENCROACH ON THE WORK OF WG 3, SO
THE SECTION WOULD BEST BE DELETED. AS AN ALTERNATIVE, IT
SHOULD REUSE LANGUAGE FROM THE ICT TASK FORCE IPR REPORT
ON OSS, STANDARDS AND IPR, IN PARTICULAR:]