Open Invention Network (OIN), the three-year-old IP league started by IBM to buy up patents to deter Microsoft from asserting its patents against Linux, apparently got bored waiting for Microsoft to make a hostile move.

So to fill its idle time and justify its existence, it's concocted a Linux Defenders program meant to make prior art more readily accessible to patent and trademark examiners, increase the quality of patents granted, and reduce the number of poor-quality patents, all issues that IBM pays lip service to when it suits it.

Programmers will be encouraged to publish inventions that could stop threatening patents from being issued and get existing patents thrown out.

The program is co-sponsored by the patent-hostile, troll-loathing Software Freedom Law Center and the Linux Foundation.

Use of Linux Defenders's database at IP.com will be free to contributors of prior art or inventions, and the hosting of so-called defensive publications on databases accessible by patent and trademark office examiners around the world will be borne by the program's sponsors.

The Linux Defenders website is located at http://www.linuxdefenders.org.

OIN initially got investments from IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony. It has acquired a reported 132 patents.