[Patents] If you meet M. Breese, tell him...

[Jean-Paul Smets jp@smets.com]

Dear all,

I am the founder of "freepatents". A person in France has created a web site
called "freepatent". According to my lawyer, this site is clearly infringing 
on
"freepatents". It contains various insults and fallacies against associations,
people, including me. My lawyers have told me that it would be no problem to 
sue
this site, win and get it closed. 

It has been my decision not to sue this site because I believe it is useless 
to
help the author of "freepatent" to get more advertising. We all believe that 
the
author of this site is Pierre Breese, an Intellectual Property expert in 
France,
or at least that Pierre Bresse has been closely advising the author of this
site. A careful reader of this mailing list found that the content of this 
site
is similar to M. Breese's own web site. And the IP adress of
"www.freepatent.org" (195.154.160.70) is the same as the "www.breese.fr". We
also have evidences that M. Breese has been calling many journalists in the
French IT press and that he has been actively repeating the same kind of 
insults
and fallacies as the ones found on the "freepatent" site.

In a recent email, M. Breese himself, a long time reader of this list, seems 
to
acknowledge he is the author of this site.

I will stick to my decision not to sue M. Breese for infringement because I do
not want to immitate the kind of behaviour M. Breese seems to sponsor. Still, 
I
need your help in order to get the "freepatent" web site closed and have M.
Breese behave in more honorable way. I think M. Breese is capable of writing
articulate articles such as the ones he wrote on "patents and standards"
(http://www.grolier.fr/cyberlexnet/COM/A970801.htm). In this article, M.
Breese explains for example that the existence of patents on communication
standards may result in the bankrupcy of small companies competing in the 
market. Everyone would probably prefer if M. Breese could
concentrate more on articulate thinking such as this one rather than on
advertising fallacies to the press.

So, if you want to help "freepatents", first stop talking about "freepatent"
in this list. 

If you are a lawyer, and you happen to work with M. Breese's IP office, please
mention that it is quite sad for the reputation of IP experts in France that 
M.
Breese is sponsoring such unlawful behaviours.

If you are an IP expert, and you happen to meet M. Breese at the world
organisation of industrial property (OMPI), please ask him to close the
"freepatent" web site because it does not give a good image of software patent
supporters, especially when it is known that companies such as IBM or HP are
both supporters of free / open source software and software patents.

If you are a civil servant, and you happen to meet M. Breese, please let M.
Breese know that his behaviour is not in line with the ethics of an IP expert.

If you work at the French Industrial Property Office, and you happen to meet 
M.
Breese, please tell him that it will be difficult to introduce him again as a
skilled and reputable IP experts at official meetings because of the content 
of
the "freepatent" web site.

In any case, please behave gently: do not crack M. Breese's web site, do not
insult him, do not spam him, do not send him viruses. Rather refer to facts 
in a
reasonable way.

More generally, you should also try to educate M. Breese on free / open source
software issues. Free Software is based on intellectual property and is
considered as very useful, including by leading industrial companies such as 
the
members of the Free Standard group (www.freestandards.org). It is possible to
finance free software quite easily because of the existence of certain kinds 
of
"intellectual properties" which can not be formalised into copyright or 
patents.
For example, know-how takes 2 years to be transmitted from one software
developer to another. In a world where software changes every 2 years, this is
enough to give some kind of revenue protection to free software publishers.

There is a lot of work for lawyers and IP experts in the free / open
source software community to advice or design open source software licenses 
for
a broader range of software publishers, to design patent strategies to protect
from other patents, to include patented code in a free / open source software.
We currently lack enough of such experts in France.

Best regards,

JPS.

PS. If you know good IP experts in France or Europe who are aware of free / 
open
source strategies, please let me know. I know a company who is looking for one
as a consultant.