The Spread of the IPR Non-Assertion Covenant

Andy Updegrove writes “An hour or so ago Sun Microsystems made good on an earlier pledge to issue further “non-assertion covenants” (NACs) in support of open standards. This type of IPR tool facilitates easy implementation of new standards, and also makes open source implementations possible. The new NACs relate to the OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) V2.0 standard and two “single sign-on” specifications co-developed with Microsoft. Hopefully, other vendors will fall in line to help create a “patent commons” in support of open standards as well as open source.”