Many people, also software developers, put their inventions or innovations onthe 'market' without filing patents. For good reasons: the patent privilegesto exclude others are not really compatible with freedoms and openness.However, to protect your freedom to operate, you need to avoid that othersfile a patent on your invention. Open Patents are a new way to do this. Software patents are still a threat. When you publish your software code, acompany or a patent troll might file a patent for the inventions in your code.The patent offices should not grant patents for existing knowledge ('priorart'), but they will have a very hard time to find the ideas in your code. Assuch the troll might succeed in getting the patent, and might stop you andeveryone else from further exploitation of your ideas. Patents are a classical protection against patents, but it's an expensive andoverly offensive solution. Defensive publications are another solution. Butthis concept is not well known and doesn't get a lot of recognition. Theestablished implementations are commercial, have a per page publication feeand hide the defensive publications behind a paywall. The DefensivePublications program, a component of Linux Defenders, uses such commercialchannel, but waives the publication fee and republishes openly outside thepaywall. This solution is however for a very narrow (Free software) field andlacks the popularity it deserves. [The Open Patent Office](http://openpatentoffice.org/) is a non-profitorganization that aims to stimulate innovation by providing an open, free andsocial alternative to the traditional patent offices. It allows inventors toregister their innovative ideas as open patents. Open patents act as defensivepublications. The Open Patent Office publishes these descriptions, timestampsthem, gives them an open patent number, classifies them, facilitatesdiscussion and facilitates easy searching and finding by patent examiners andthe general public.