CA supports IBM`s open source patent pledge as companies announce long-term licensing agreement

Computer Associates International, Inc has pledged open access to key innovations covered by 14 of its US patents - and counterparts of these patents issued in other countries - for individuals and groups working on open source software.

CA also announced it has reached a long-term, patent cross-licence agreement with IBM, creating an exchange of licence rights and releases between the companies.

In making its patent pledge to the open source community, CA is joining IBM in encouraging other companies to create an industry-wide "patent commons" in which patents are pledged royalty-free to further innovation in areas of broad interest to developers and users of information technology. IBM made a similar pledge earlier this year.

"CA is committed to make appropriate types of intellectual property available to open source developers and customers free of any royalties or licensing fees so that innovation and high-value development can flourish," said Mark Barrenechea, executive vice-president of technology strategy and chief technology architect at CA.

"We have a strong commitment to promoting innovation through open source and open standards, and we will continue to strengthen our position as the leading provider of management and security solutions in this market segment."

"Everyone benefits when innovation is fostered through collaboration and the open exchange of technological advances," said Jim Stallings, IBM`s vice-president of intellectual property and standards.

"We are gratified to see CA respond so enthusiastically to IBM`s call for owners of intellectual property to accelerate interoperability and the adoption of open source software."

The patents covered by CA`s non-assertion pledge address a wide variety of technology challenges and can be used in a full range of open source projects.

They include:

* Application development and modelling that automates translation between programming languages and provides visual modelling and editing of data objects to create more powerful, flexible programming tools.

* Business intelligence and analytics that simplify visualization of complex multi-dimensional data techniques with neural networking technology and efficient management of the aggregation and population of data marts.

* Systems management and storage management solutions that provide intelligent process controls to maximise system performance and storage utilisation.

* Network management and security tools that enhance visualisation of network traffic patterns and congestion, selectively capture and filter network traffic, and provide granular session control capabilities.

Open source software is based on collaborative innovation among developers around the world. CA has been a leading supporter of the open source community - embracing Linux early on as a platform for enterprise management and software development, and releasing the popular Ingres database as an open source solution. A complete list of applicable patents is available at Patents

To qualify for this CA programme, licences of solutions using specified CA intellectual property must be certified by opensource.org.

The IBM and CA cross-licence agreement will make it easier for customers to access and leverage intellectual property from IBM and CA to achieve their business goals.

"This agreement launches a new relationship between CA and IBM, allowing for innovation while preserving customer choice," said Barrenechea. "It will stimulate the development of new solutions and enable the flexible combination of products from both companies in an on-demand environment."