David Berlind has published an article in ZDNet about "open source insurance".
This idea wants to offer insurance against any form of intellectual property claim against open source software users for a premium of 3 percent of the annual coverage. Daniel Egger is the founder of "Open Source Risk Management" and is looking for the backing of large insurance underwriters.
As I have blogged before here, the EU Commission is also looking into the possibility of this kind of insurance. There is a 2003 study on "The possible introduction of an insurance against costs for litigation in patent cases" by CJA Consultants Ltd, European Policy Advisers, Britain and Brussels at the Commission website on the Community Patent.
That study was limited to insurances covering patent litigation, while the project above would cover all kind of intellectual property claims. The study says that patent litigation insurance has not seen much success until now. Demand is low, and premium prices are high.
I have no idea if this kind of insurance will be a viable solution to the intellectual property problems facing open source software. Eggert assumes that patent claims will be next after the SCO case. "The money to be made is phenomenal".
Assuming that he is right and that his insurance will provide the solution to the problem. That would convert the patent litigation costs for open source software to the model of car accidents litigation. Usually an insurance company pays for those. The cost of that risk for drivers is the cost of insurance.
And then one could easily sum up the total cost of software patents for open source projects by adding up all the insurance premiums.
That is not possible right now. However, Egger is probably right. It would be a big surprise if we won't see many claims against open source projects based on software patents in the future.
And if insurance won't work as a countermeasure, other strategies need to be discussed. Just as the basic idea of insurance and just as the basic idea of open source software to begin with, these strategies should be based on sharing the burden of dealing with the threat between many interested parties.
Slashdot discussion here.
Posted by Karl-Friedrich Lenz at February 22, 2004 09:27 PM | TrackBack