The trolls are coming. It’s inevitable. As the success of cloud computing continues, grows and evolves and the size of the associated deals increases, the eyes of scavenging trolls eager to make a quick parasitic buck are drawn more and more to the opportunities awaiting them in that field.

They can pick up the relevant patents from a number of different sources, notably from failed start ups and from university research facilities keen to get quick pay back for their work. For large corporations for whom trolling is only one of many lines of income, large portfolios of patents will have been created already in the course of their cloud computing business units regular operations.

Knowing that the attacks are coming, that the trolls are poised for battle, what defences can we prepare?  This is a situation that OIN speaks directly into. Among the many new updates to their anti-troll arsenal there is an intentional development towards protection of cloud services. This includes the addition of the packages from OpenStack to the new (March 6th) Linux definition, which given the OIN membership of IBM and Red Hat, both heavily invested in OpenStack, means the cloud infrastructure project has serious protection.

If your business relies on open source software, joining the Open Invention Network is an effective defence, worthy of your serious consideration. For more detail on OIN’s move towards defending the cloud, check out Simon’s InfoWorld article.