In addition to your Community Membership, OIN offers 4 additional products & services related to Open Source and patent non-aggression.

OIN Patent Non-Aggression Community Membership
There are many benefits for members of our community. You can find a summary of the key benefits here.

Sharing Prior Art
OIN leverages our network of relationships in the greater Open Source community to collect and share prior art in order to permit OIN licensees at risk, or in litigation, to better defend against Linux-centric patent aggression.

OIN Patent Acquisitions & Threat Clearing
In certain circumstances, OIN may acquire patents from patent antagonists asserting patents in situations where the acquisition provides a broad-based clearing of patent threats to OIN community members.

OIN Reduces Patent Application Claim Scope
OIN routinely utilizes the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) (defined below) pre-issuance submission program to submit prior art to limit the claim scope — or secure outright rejection — of overly broad patent claims in patent applications that are focused on key technology areas relevant to Linux and adjacent Open Source technologies.
The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) is a U.S. federal statute passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on September 16, 2011. The law represents the most significant legislative change to the U.S. patent system since the Patent Act of 1952 and closely resembles previously proposed legislation in the Senate with the Patent Reform Act of 2009.
Named for its lead sponsors, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the Act switches the U.S. patent system from a “first to invent” to a “first inventor to file” system, eliminates interference proceedings and develops post-grant opposition. Its central provisions went into effect on September 16, 2012 and on March 16, 2013.
Infosys is actively taking open source, and open source based products, to all our enterprise customers, and so we are extremely excited to become part of OIN, and we encourage others to join OIN as well to support this very important initiative.
Linux plays an important role at TomTom as the core of all our Portable Navigation Devices. We believe that by becoming an Open Invention Network licensee, we encourage Linux development and foster innovation in a technical community that benefits everyone.
By fostering the largest patent non-aggression community in history, OIN has protected core Linux and a broad array of FOSS technologies from patent aggression. We have worked together for the past 15 years, with the goal that FOSS would grow unimpeded by patent risks, and we have largely succeeded. OIN has made a transformational difference. I look forward to working with Keith and OIN as it creatively faces new challenges in the next decade.
Foxconn continuously looks for ways to integrate advances into the design and manufacturing of smart consumer electronics, cloud and networking equipment, computing devices and components, among others. We are pleased to join the Open Invention Network and support its role in protecting open source.
At JD.com, we have employed open source technologies such as Kubernetes and Open Stack, along with Linux, to improve the speed, functionality and stability of our infrastructure while lowering operating costs.
Global adoption of Linux and other open source technologies is an irreversible trend. For the last 15 years, they have transformed almost every industry. By sharing innovation, Linux and open source capabilities have soared, application interoperability is unprecedented, connectivity is virtually everywhere, while business and consumer productivity are at all-time highs. By blocking patent aggression in open source, OIN has enabled safer investments in product development and helped to enable th… Read more
At Rakuten, our businesses continue to evolve as we address new market opportunities. Because of this, we are a user and strong advocate of open source software. We are building the first 100% fully virtualized mobile network, enabling us to scale rapidly and offer the best Quality-of-Service (QoS) available. By joining OIN, we are demonstrating our commitment to Open Source Software (OSS) and supporting it with a pledge of patent non-aggression.
Through our information platforms, people can be more creative and enrich their lives through deeper communications with their friends and family. We view Linux and adjacent open source software as key elements for our business. ByteDance’s participation in the OIN community shows our consistent commitment to shared innovation. We will continue to support it with patent non-aggression in core Linux and other important OSS technologies.
We see incredible value in the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities. Our work in collecting, preserving and making source code available to developers, academics and government entities, will enable developers to continue to innovate. We are very pleased for OIN’s sponsorship and its support in maintaining the technical and scientific knowledge that may be lost without preservation and may be further useful to developers from an intellectual property perspective.
Openness and sharing are the sources of innovation. Alibaba is excited to join Open Invention Network and share our cutting edge innovations with industry leaders.
Join the OIN Community
The membership process is simple. We welcome all individuals & companies who advocate for Open Source and are focused on reducing risk from the threats of patent aggressors.