[Patents] [Freesw] gouvernement 'buy up' patents or copyright (fwd)

[Kristoff Bonne kristoff@mccb.be.eu.org]

Greetings,

My first message was perhaps a bit short, so here a longer version of it.

* Let's first take the example of a patent of a certain drug.
If I remember correctly, as part of the discussion on the 'human gene
project', the topic has been forwarded that there is a danger that patents
will stop research in a certain area of science or technology as other
commercial companies cannot gain any money from that research.
So, the idea has been brought forward that basic research should remain
possible, even if a certain area of 'knowledge' already is patented.

Image is situation where it turns out that -based on the further research 
as explained here above- a piece of medical knowledge (that already is
patented) holds the key for a drug, vacin or threatement that could help
millions of people.
In that case, it should be possible for 'the society' the 'buy back'
the patent from the commercial company and into place it into the public
domain; as the public interest is clearly much greater then the interest
of one company.

In use the words 'buy back', as the company would have to be payed for the
cost it has already done in the developement of the products.
A balance should be found between the cost for the state (to buy back the
patent) and the interest of the company (the money it has invested into
the product.
(Anycase, a company with a good PR-division could make a lot of money on
that by itself).


- BT's patent on hyperlinks should -perhaps- also be a possible candidate.
- So are copyrighted piece of code (e.g. basic software components that
are becoming a basic part of the computing-infrastructure).


* The senario above involves a manual intervention of 'the society', wich
could work very fine in certains areas, but be more difficult to use in
other areas. (like computer-science).

This for a number of reasons:
- computer-science evolves much faster.
- In contrast to (say) drug-making where cost of going from a piece of
medical knowledge to a finished product is very large and takes a lot of
time; the step from an computer-'idea' to a piece of running code is much
smaller and can actually be done by individuals or weakly-organised groups
of individuals (like a lot of the open-source projects).

So, we could simply impose the rule that all fully-neutral libre-software  
are free to use any software-patents without having to pay for it.
(I use 'fully-neutral' to exclude the projects -like mozilla or KDE- that
give special privilige to certain companies to use this 'open' code in
their 'closed' programs).

I think there a two good reasons for that:
1/ IMHO, the advantage of the society of free-to-use libre software is
very clear.
Especially if you look at the use of open-source software in the 'thirth
world' (is this still the 'political correct' word to use).
So, the availability of this kind of software could help establish a
knowledge economicy in these countries and close the poverty-gap in the
world.


2/ What is the exact purpose of a patent?
IMHO, a purpose of a patent is to allow the 'private sector' to do basic
and applied scientific and technolgical research.
In contrast to the 'public sector' (that is payed by the 'society' and
where the gains go back to the society), a patent gives the private sector
a time-limited monopoly on the use of its findings to pay for the costs it
has done to get a finishing product based on the patented knowledge.


I can see that the process of making a drug can be quite high, ... but
what is the cost of a software-idea? What was the cost for BT
to 'inventing' the hyperlink?
IMHO, this has very few to do with the actually reasons patents are meant
for.

Ony could ask this question:
IMHO, one could say that -if there was no patenting-system for (say)
drugs- there would be less medication available and this would for sure 
NOT be a good thing for the society.
So, the 'cost' of patenting drugs is much smaller that its advantages.
And, this costs disappears after the patent expires and -as these drugs
are still needed and produced after that amount of time- this add a second
advantage for the 'society'.

But, if there would be no software-patents, would this mean there would be
less or less-quality software available? I doubt it.
So, software-patents cost without adding any advantage.
In addition to this, software loses its value very much faster, so the use
of a piece of software once the patent has expired would be very small.


Just my 2 eurocents of thoughts and
Cheerio! Kr. Bonne.
---
kristoff.bonne@mccb.be.eu.org             fax: +32 59 333072
multi computer club Brugge/Linux-Unix:    'unix-info@mccb.be.eu.org'
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2000 18:36:32 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Kristoff Bonne <kristoff@mccb.be.eu.org>
Reply-To: freesw@conecta.it
To: patents@liberte.aful.org, Freesw@conecta.it
Subject: [Freesw] gouvernement 'buy up' patents or copyright

Greetings,

Just a thought:
In the 'old economy', society (usually the national states) has the right
to 'buy up' property (land) of individuals if it serves 'the greater good'
(e.g. to build a railway track).
This is a generally excepted principle.

So, why not extend this principle to the 'knowledge economy' and give the
gouvernement (at national and/or European level) the right to 'buy out'
certain patents or copyrights (at cost-price) to release it to 'the
public', if it serves the public good. (e.g. things concerning security
-like encryption principle or software-, or where the existence of patents
stops further research in a certain domain, ...).

But, I guess this is not a very new idea and that other people have
already thought of this, but shouldn't this become a general
excepted principle too.

Just my 2 eurocents of thoughts.


Cheerio! Kr. Bonne.

*** catch-frase of the week:
The only remedy against too-strong multinationals, are equally strong
governements and under equally strong democratic control.
***




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