The Open Invention Network was originally created to defend against patent lawsuits from Microsoft, Oracle, and other big game developers.
The essence of the approach is to create a common pool of patents available to all members of the organization. If one of the participants is sued related to patent claims, then he can use the entire pool of Open Invention Network patents to file a counterclaim.
However, the situation has changed since then. For example, the company itself Microsoft joins the Open Invention Network adding 60 of their patents to the pool.
In this regard, at the recent Open Source Summit in Lyon, it was announced that the Open Invention Network is going to tackle the problem of patent trolls, that is, companies that do not develop themselves. The pool of patents will be used to actively work to invalidate prior art patents.
One such case is the patent on which the Rothschild Patent Imaging (RPI) lawsuit against the GNOME Foundation is based.
Source: linux.org.ru