Free access to open-source software patents

PatentCafe , a provider of intellectual property management resources and patent research solutions, has opened its open-source software (OSS) patent search engine devoted entirely to search access of OSS patents. The database has initially been populated with 500 IBM software patents that the company pledged open access to for people and groups working on open-source software that meet the terms of the Open-Source Initiative.

At a time when the open-source community is growing and lawsuits are rampant in the software industry— even in the industrial space —access to relevant patent data can be critical.

Because of the complexity of patent documents, searching patents has historically been the domain of skilled patent searchers. To make the process simpler, the OSS patent search engine allows use of natural language search queries to describe the concept of the desired software functions. The search engine’s latent semantic analysis technology automatically ranks results with the most-relevant patents first. PDF copies of the 500 IBM patents are available for a nominal fee.

Click here to access the search engine .

—David Greenfield, editorial director, Control Engineering, dgreenfield@reedbusiness.com

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