Durham, NC (June 30, 2020) – Open Invention Network (OIN), the largest patent non-aggression community in history, and Baidu, the largest Chinese language search engine and one of the leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies in the world, announced today that Baidu has joined as a community member.  As an active supporter of open source and an important contributor of global open source technology, Baidu is committed to promoting the rapid development of AI through an open source platform and facilitating industrial transformation.

“Artificial intelligence-driven and internet-based services continue to spawn new industries while advancing business performance through actionable intelligence.  As a global leader in internet and AI-related services and products, Baidu recognizes the benefits of shared innovation inherent in open source,” said Keith Bergelt, CEO of Open Invention Network. “We are pleased Baidu has joined our community and committed to patent non-aggression in Linux and adjacent open source technologies.”

“Baidu is and will always be a strong supporter and participant of open source,” said Cui Lingling, the head of Baidu’s Patent Department, “Baidu has launched a number of open source platforms including Apollo (Autonomous Driving Platform), PaddlePaddle (Parallel Distributed Deep Learning) and the like, and has been actively building patent cooperation. Baidu is a world-leading artificial intelligence platform company. Baidu’s participation in the OIN community shows our consistent commitment to open source innovation. Baidu will continue to support Linux patent protection and help foster a healthy Linux ecosystem.”

OIN’s community practices patent non-aggression in core Linux and adjacent open source technologies by cross-licensing Linux System patents to one another royalty-free. Similarly, OIN licenses its patents royalty-free to organizations that agree not to assert their patents against the Linux System.  The OIN license can be signed online at http://www.j-oin.net/.

About Baidu

Founded on January 1st, 2000, Baidu is a leading search engine, knowledge and information centered Internet platform and AI company. With over 1.1 billion monthly active devices running Baidu mobile apps, Baidu is the primary platform for Internet users to access Chinese information and responds to billions of search requests from more than 100 countries and regions daily.

Baidu’s story began when Co-Founder of the company, Robin Li, was awarded a U.S. patent for his initial development of the Rankdex site-scoring algorithm for search engine page rankings, making China one of only four countries in the world with core search engine technologies in addition to the U.S., Russia and South Korea. According to the Patent Protection Association of China, Baidu held 5,712 AI patents in 2019, the most in China.

Baidu keeps technological innovation at the heart of its business and has been a global leader in innovation investment, R&D and talent acquisition. With its mission to make the complicated world simpler through technology, Baidu is committed to providing products and services that better understand users and promotes constant technological innovation. Through years of investment and development and the company’s global leadership in deep learning, Baidu rank fourth on the list of the top five global AI companies by Harvard Business Review in 2019 and is the only company on the list in China.

PaddlePaddle, as the only independent R&D deep learning platform in China, has been officially open-sourced to professional communities since 2016. DuerOS, as an open operating system, has released an open platform, and built a voice ecosystem, and also provided support for third party integration. Baidu Cloud primarily provides AI solutions, cloud infrastructure and other services to enterprises and individuals. Apollo, as the world’s largest open-source autonomous driving platform, supports commercial production of autonomous driving vehicles and incorporates autonomous driving capabilities, including valet parking.

Under the strategy of strengthening the mobile foundation and leading in AI, Baidu has built an increasingly prosperous and powerful mobile ecosystem and steadily improved its AI ecosystem with accelerated commercialization.

 

About Open Invention Network

Open Invention Network (OIN) is the largest patent non-aggression community in history and supports freedom of action in Linux as a key element of open source software (OSS). Patent non-aggression in core technologies is a cultural norm within OSS, so that the litmus test for authentic behavior in the OSS community includes OIN membership. Funded by Google, IBM, NEC, Philips, Sony, SUSE and Toyota, OIN has more than 3,200 community members and owns more than 1,300 global patents and applications. The OIN patent license and member cross-licenses are available royalty-free to any party that joins the OIN community.

For more information, visit http://www.openinventionnetwork.com.