Google expands open patent pledge to 79 more about data center management
Google is renewing and expanding upon a pledge it publicized earlier this year, promising not to sue first over open source software patents.
To recall, the Internet giant published what it dubbed as its "Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge back in March.
Google reps have reiterated that the pledge was drafted in the hopes that it will "serve as a model for companies wishing to put some of their patents into the service of open source."
At the time, Google led off with with 10 patents related to MapReduce (the proprietary forerunner to the open source Hadoop framework).
This week, the Mountain View, Calif.-based corporation is expanding the pledge to cover 79 patents related to data center management.
Covering the spectrum from middleware to distributed storage management, examples include U.S. Patent No. 6,205,563, which covers a method and apparatus for inter-domain alarm correlation, and U.S. Patent No. 5,974,441, referring to client server interactive system method with Java.
Google isn't alone in hoping to stifle the ever-growing number of patent-related lawsuits in the technology industry.
In June, the Obama administration took a public stance on the tech patent wars, introducing five executive actions and seven legislative recommendations to ensure the "highest-quality" tech patents are issued.
Not mincing words, the White House also took measures to set up a new task force intended to protect innovators from what it described in a letter as "frivolous litigation," and more pointedly, "patent trolls."
The full list of patents that Google has filed under the OPN Pledge is available online now.