[Patents] Re: gouvernement 'buy up' patents or copyright

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

I have also read your license, but not studied the whole project
intensively enough to really understand it.

For some time now I have been thinking of writing two fairly simple
licenses that don't require a pool organisation to be effective.

OPL: may be used without permission of the patent owner only in copyleft
(GPL) software.  The "inventor" can otherwise continue to exploit his
patent and can put it into various pools.  Many variants possible,
including that labeled as "GPPL" in
http://www.freepatents.org/shanghai/shanghai.pdf.

GPPL:
true patentleft : public intellectual property that may *never* (subject
to no negotation) be used in any system that uses any technology which
cannot be freely reimplemented (i.e. used at least under GPL terms).

Patent owners who want to retain some ability to bargain with their patent
rights will prefer OPL.  Organisations like LPF, FFII etc who may want to
systematically dry up all the patent assets that patent funds (and other
pure lawyer companies who can't be deterred by an OPL pool) might own.

These licenses are independent of each other and the rest of the world,
and the patent owner can always sell parts of his patent to others.

In a better patent system, the OPL/GPPL might entitle their owner to pay
less patent fees.  In Germany patent fees are already now lowered if a
patent is licensed non-exclusively for a low fee.

Actually I am drafting a petition letter on the Community Patent that
calls for a radical patent reform, in which patent fees are abolished
altogether, because they corrupt the patent offices, making them dependent
on granting more patents:

        http://swpat.ffii.org/xatra/egp27/

-phm