Open menu OVHcloud Open login menu Open search bar Patent Pledge Who are we? Patent Pledge Patent Pledge As a leading European cloud provider with a global presence, OVHcloud strongly believes in the importance of an open, sovereign cloud. It also recognises the key role of open-source technology in this strategy. In keeping with its values of trust and collaboration — as well as its commitment to interoperability and reversibility — OVHcloud supports and contributes to open-source communities, as they are an integral part of its ecosystem. This belief is entrenched in our corporate culture, and we would like to strengthen this even further with the following pledge. As OVHcloud expands internationally amidst an escalating threat of software patents and patent trolls, OVHcloud had no choice but to gradually build its own portfolio of software patents, which we intend to develop on a purely defensive basis. Our goal is to protect OVHcloud from the risks presented by software patents in the cloud domain and, more broadly, to discourage any open-source infringement based on software patents. To support our open innovation strategy, we have also pursued other initiatives. For example, we have recently become a member of the Open Invention Network (OIN), the largest patent non-aggression community in history, which supports freedom of action in Linux as a key element of free software. We are also participants in the GaiaX project, one of whose objectives is to guarantee interoperability standards so that users are not locked in with the same provider. We will continue to pursue any other initiatives that protect our values and ecosystem. We want to clarify our approach to patents, as this may raise legitimate questions from the community. For this reason, we would like to clarify our approach and make it transparent to everyone. This statement is an irrevocable commitment from OVHcloud as of its publication. To keep people up to speed across the globe, it will be updated at least every 3 years as we structure our action in favour of open source, and we will not renege on previously granted rights. Our pledge: When we distribute Open Source Software, OVHcloud agrees to use only Open Source Licences, which help to limit the risk posed by software patents (primarily the Apache 2.0, Eclipse Public Licence 2.0 and GNU General Public Licence 3.0 licences). As such, and provided that the associated Open Source Licence is properly complied with, Software Patents will not be enforced against any natural or legal person using Open Source Software distributed by OVHcloud. Furthermore, OVHcloud agrees not to use the Software Patents it is in full ownership of against any person or entity that develops, distributes, uses or sells a service based on an Open Source Community Project. Nevertheless, OVHcloud reserves the right to terminate this commitment in order to protect itself, its affiliates or the Open Source Community Project against any beneficiary who files a lawsuit or other legal proceeding against OVHcloud’s Intellectual Property rights or an Open Source Community Project. However, OVHcloud cannot guarantee that the technologies covered by its patents do not infringe the intellectual property rights of a third party, and disclaims all guarantees as to the validity or applicability of its patents. Definition: "Open Source Licence" refers to any licence that complies with the criteria defined by the Free Software Foundation or/and any licence that complies with the principles defined by the Open Source Initiative, as listed on https://spdx.org/licenses/. "Open Source Software" refers to any software (including the computer program, the preparatory design material, the source code, the object code and the executable code of that computer program, as well as all elements necessary for its governance) made available under an Open Source Licence. “Software Patents” refers to all patents held by OVHcloud relating to computer-implemented inventions, as listed in the Appendix. "Open Source Community Project" refers to any Open Source Software publicly available and fully available online in its latest version. Appendix 1: FAQ What patents are subject to this pledge? Is OVHcloud the only company to articulate Open Source and these patents in this way? If you do not believe in software patents, why not invalidate them instead? If I use an open-source OVHcloud development available on GitHub, do I need to worry about potential patents? What does the Patent Pledge add, if the sources of development are already open source? What will happen to the developments that will have benefited from the Patent Pledge, if OVHcloud decides to end this commitment? Appendix 2: List of Software Patents Title Country Patent Application - Number Blog article METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR DEFINING A WEB SITE DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY US 16/030,445 METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR DEFENDING AN INFRASTRUCTURE AGAINST A DISTRIBUTED DENIAL OF SERVICE ATTACK EP 18315013.5 SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DEVICE MIGRATION EP 18315018.4 METHOD FOR IMPROVED AUTOMATED SOFTWARE UPDATE UPON DEPLOYMENT OF A NETWORKING APPARATUS EP 18315023.4 SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR OPERATING A NETWORKING DEVICE EP 18315022.6 SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR OPERATING A NETWORKING DEVICE EP 18315024.2 METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING SERVICE REDUNDANCY BETWEEN A MASTER SERVER AND A SLAVE SERVER EP 18315021.8 SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR APPLYING A CONFIGURATION EP 18315025.9 SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CONNECTION MANAGEMENT EP 18315038.2 METHOD AND DATA PACKET CLEANING SYSTEM FOR SCREENING DATA PACKETS RECEIVED AT A SERVICE INFRASTRUCTURE EP 18315043.2 METHOD FOR ATTRACTING USERS TO A WEB PAGE AND SERVER IMPLEMENTING THE METHOD US 16/244,494 SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CONFIGURING VIRTUAL NETWORKS EP 18315045.7 SERVICE INFRASTRUCTURE AND METHODS OF PREDICTING AND DETECTING POTENTIAL ANOMALIES AT THE SERVICE INFRASTRUCTURE EP 18315048.1 SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR NETWORK MANAGEMENT EP 19315009.1 SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR OPERATING A DATA CENTER BASED ON A GENERATED MACHINE LEARNING PIPELINE EP 19315010.9 METHOD OF DEPLOYING A NETWORK CONFIGURATION IN A DATACENTER HAVING A POINT OF PRESENCE EP 19315011.7 METHOD OF AND SYSTEM FOR CLUSTERING SEARCH QUERIES (Priority only) US 16/518,170 METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR SUPERVISING A HEALTH OF A SERVER INFRASTRUCTURE EP 19315028.1 https://www.ovh.com/blog/alerting-based-on-ipmi-data-collection/ SELF-ENCRYPTING FLASH DRIVE US 14/191,687 SELF-ENCRYPTING FLASH DRIVE US 15/077,106 HIERARCHICAL FLASH TRANSLATION LAYER US 14/067,015 MAGNETIC RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY JOURNAL US 14/065,641 MAGNETIC RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY JOURNAL FOR MULTI-LEVEL CELL FLASH MEMORY US 14/065,589 LOCK-FREE RAID IMPLEMENTATION IN MULTI-QUEUE ARCHITECTURE US 15/494,601 LOCK-FREE RAID IMPLEMENTATION IN MULTI-QUEUE ARCHITECTURE US 16/163,236 LOCK-FREE DATAPATH DESIGN FOR EFFICIENT PARALLEL PROCESSING STORAGE ARRAY IMPLEMENTATION US 15/600,405 PCIE SWITCH WITH DATA AND CONTROL PATH SYSTOLIC ARRAY US 15/494,606 PCIE SWITCH WITH DATA AND CONTROL PATH SYSTOLIC ARRAY US 16/288,924 REMOTE VIRTUAL ENDPOINT IN A SYSTOLIC ARRAY US 15/844,487 HIGH PERFORMANCE RAID OPERATIONS OFFLOAD WITH MINIMIZED LOCAL BUFFERING US 15/844,501 GALOIS FIELD PIPELINED MULTIPLIER WITH POLYNOMIAL AND BETA INPUT PASSING SCHEME US 15/836,491 AUTO ZERO COPY APPLIED TO A COMPUTE ELEMENT WITHIN A SYSTOLIC ARRAY US 15/844,505 SYSTEM MEMORY CONTROLLER WITH ATOMIC OPERATIONS US 15/849,537 SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ACCESSING NON-VOLATILE MEMORY AND WRITE ACCELERATION CACHE US 16/294,028 Distributed State Machine for High Availability of Non-Volatile Memory in Cluster Based Computing Systems US 16/395,738 Target Optimized Auto Provisioning of Storage in a Discoverable Storage Network US 16/565,889 FLEXIBLE RAID DRIVE GROUPING BASED ON PERFORMANCE US 16/703,617 EXTENT BASED RAID ENCODING US 16/703,620 Elastic Scaling in a Storage Network Environment US 16/697,626 Tools My customer account Webmail API Procedure Mailing lists Status Whois Domain contact Report abuse (abuse@ovh.net) Support Help centre Guides Community Support levels Contact us OVHcloud Customer Service Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm 0333 370 0425 Local call rate News Press Blog Ecosystem Experience Social networks © Copyright 1999-2021 OVHcloud Terms & conditions Contracts Data protection Rights and obligations of domain name holders ICANN documentation for domain name holders About OVHcloud OVHcloud Careers In accordance with the 2006/112/CE Directive, modified on 01/01/2015, prices incl. 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