---
title: 'Software Patent Litigation: What Have We Learned?'
osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/conferences/seagl2015/program/proposals/11
beginning: '2015-10-23T15:00:00.000-07:00'
end: '2015-10-23T15:50:00.000-07:00'
presenters:
- name: Deb Nicholson
  affiliation: SeaGL
  osem_url: https://osem.seagl.org/users/32
  gravatar_id: ad818bec4900cb3354d2aa536a7bf207
  biography: Deb Nicholson is a free software policy expert and a passionate community
    advocate. She is the General Manager at the Open Source Initiative which stewards
    the Open Source Definition and works to raise awareness and adoption of open source
    software. She is also a founding organizer of the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference,
    an annual event dedicated to surfacing new voices and welcoming new people to
    the free software community. She lives with her husband and her lucky black cat
    in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
---

The huge increase in software patent litigation over the last 15 years has produced reams of articles, cost fortunes and even snagged the US President's attention. But when something goes on for long enough, it also produces data -- lots and lots of data. So what have we learned from all the data?

Non-practicing entities are growing and litigation costs increase each year, but that's hardly the whole story. Ms. Nicholson will examine data from academic and industrial sources to see what it all means for Linux, Android, GNU and the rest of the free and open source community. While some solutions are already working, more data brings more opportunities to impact the patent field in way that lets developers worry less about patent suits.
