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2005-10-04

Sun Patent Non-Assertion Covenant for OpenDocument Offers Model for Standards.

On September 30, 2005 Sun Microsystems published a declaration of non-enforcement of its U.S. and foreign patents against any implementation of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification or of any subsequent version of ODF. This non-assertion covenant is being praised as a creative mechanism for patent management in the OASIS open standards development context -- a "model for patent protection that doesn't involve the glorification of software patents."

Cover Pages Hosted by OASIS, 10/4/2005