CNCF Launches Hero Challenge to Combat Patent Trolls

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in collaboration with The Linux Foundation launched an initiative to thwart patent trolls that have increasingly targeted open source projects such as Kubernetes.

The Cloud Native Hero Challenge rewards software developers for identifying prior art that can be used to invalidate a patent that was acquired by a non-practicing entity (NPE), otherwise known as a patent troll.

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Jim Zemlin, executive director for The Linux Foundation, told conference attendees that The Linux Foundation has been challenging these types of patents with a 90% success rate for several years now. More recently, the consortium has allied with Unified Patents, an organization that multiple companies have created to reduce the cost of litigation.

The Cloud Native Hero Challenge seeks to reward engineers who can identify prior art that would invalidate a patent that was mistakenly granted by a patent office. Patent trolls are exploiting weaknesses in the patent application process to launch lawsuits that claim patents they now own were violated. The goal isn’t necessarily to resolve the dispute, as much as it is to extort organizations into agreeing to settle these lawsuits, said Zemlin. Instead, patent trolls are offering to settle claims at a cost that is lower than litigation fees that would otherwise be incurred, he explained.

The Cloud Native Hero Challenge is part of a larger effort to render these cases moot, by asking a patent office to invalidate a patent based on the prior art evidence presented by Unified Patents. Evidence of such pre-existing technology could be in the form of open-source documentation, published standards or specifications, product manuals, articles, blogs, books, or other types of publicly available information. Individuals who help the CNCF discover prior art will earn swag and win prizes rather than any specific monetary compensation.

It’s not clear what economic impact patent trolls are having on organizations that build or consume open-source software but given the widespread adoption of a platform such as Kubernetes, the potential risks are substantial.

The Linux Foundation is already providing the 1,300 companies that make up its ecosystem with access to an NPE defense playbook which includes annual risk analysis and a patent portfolio analysis. The Cloud Native Hero Challenge expands the scope of a bounty program that Unified Patents already administers.

There is nothing illegal about the NPE business model, but it does act as a drag on innovation. Combating frivolous lawsuits is an expensive proposition that diverts resources that could be applied more productively to, for example, improve security.

The challenge is that not many members of the open-source community are even aware these lawsuits exist. Even when they are, they may not have the time to help research the issue. However, at the very least, everyone who helps invalidate a patent that is being used to extort organizations can at least lay claim to a moral victory that benefits the greater open-source community.