IBM will begin allowing the use of 500 technologies covered by patents it holds by developers working on open source projects. While IBM will not forfeit the patents, it will seek no licensing fees from groups that use them on projects that meet a definition by the Open Source Initiative. Despite past donations of intellectual property to open source groups, the new program is seen as a fundamental shift in the company's approach because unlike those donations, this one does not hold the potential to harm IBM's competitors. The 500 patents that will be available involve 14 categories of technology and do not target any specific open source project. IBM said it hopes to create a "patent commons," including the initial 500 as well as other patents, that other companies could join. IBM's new approach to managing its intellectual property, however, has not diminished its pursuit of new patents. IBM, which is the world's largest patent holder, collected 3,248 new patents in 2004, 1,300 more than Matsushita Electric Industrial, which had the second-highest tally for the year. New York Times, 11 January 2005 (registration req'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/technology/11soft.html