Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft join Open COVID Pledge amid pandemic
The “ Open COVID Pledge”, an initiative urging companies to free their IP to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic, has attracted several technology innovators following Intel’s lead.
Launched in late March and founded by a group of scientists, lawyers and entrepreneurs, the initiative invites IP owners to grant free and temporary licences to use their patent and copyright protected technology to end the pandemic.
The initiative began gaining momentum and, in early April, WIPR reported that Intel had joined the pledge as a founding sponsor, alongside Unified Patents, an organisation which aims to deter non-practicing entities, and non-profit Fabricatorz Foundation.
Then, earlier this week, Amazon, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Microsoft, and Sandia National Laboratories joined the pledge, making their patents freely available.
Jorge Contreras, professor of law at the University of Utah, and one of the authors of the Open COVID Pledge, said that the companies are “demonstrating their vision and leadership by putting global health first”.
Combined, the group owns hundreds of thousands of patents. Each is offering to grant a temporary licence that allows the public to use the pledgor’s patents in the research, development, and deployment of medical equipment, network products, software solutions, and other technologies to assist the public health crisis.
Jennifer Yokoyama, chief IP counsel of Microsoft, said: “Pledges and open licensing like this effort can help spur innovation, especially in a crisis like this one.
“Researchers, scientists, and others working against the virus should be able to develop and deploy effective solutions at scale without needing to worry about the threat of patent litigation.”
HP’s patent portfolio covers technologies, including supercomputing, swarm learning, and location-based services.
Brett Alten, chief IP counsel at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, added: “The Open COVID Pledge aligns with our purpose to advance the way people live and work by enabling organisations to freely use and combine our innovations with their own technologies to create breakthrough solutions to combat this disease. We encourage other innovators to join us in this pledge.”
Yesterday, sister site LSIPR published an in-depth look at calls to offer up IP for free, and what it means for patent owners.
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