Barclays and the TD Bank Group have joined the Open Invention Network's Linux and open-source protection consortium. //

When it comes to defending the intellectual property (IP) rights of Linux and open-source software, global leading banks aren't the first businesses to come to mind. Things have changed. Barclays, the London-based global corporate and investment bank, and the TD Bank Group, with its 26-million global customers, have joined the leading open-source IP defense group, the Open Invention Network (OIN)

For years, the OIN, the largest patent non-aggression consortium, has protected Linux from patent attacks and patent trolls. Recently, it expanded its scope from core Linux programs and adjacent open-source code by expanding its Linux System Definition. In particular, that means patents relating to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) 10 and the Extended File Allocation Table exFAT file system are now protected.

As important as this is, why would banks, no matter how big, care? It's because even banks care about opposing the abuse of IP rights by patent assertion entities (PAE), better known to most of us as "patent trolls." Even banks are subject to patent troll attacks these days.