[Patents] patent pools enforcing per-copy-licensing mode of software development

[PILCH Hartmut phm@a2e.de]

A+W Endres wrote:

> Could you explain the problem that you have with the MP3 licensing
> scheme. It is well documented to the world under
> http://mp3licensing.com.
 
> There you find some 65 companies that have acquired licenses already.
> Is your point that some companies should get preferred treatment, like
> e.g. the Open Source community?

The problem is that one model of software distribution is getting
preferred treatment.  Information works are forced into the straitjacket
of "per copy payment", and the "open source comnunity" is forced into the
straitjacket of having to be "one company".  So is probably the "shareware
community".

It is quite artificial to distribute digital information in controlled
single copies.  You usually have to go long ways to achieve this:  closed
source code, anti-copying mechanisms, policing etc.  For information
works, this is not at all natural, and without patents, this
proprietary model tends to be a transitional one.  Eventually information
reaches the optimal stage to which it tends and which is economically
preferable for many reasons:  free/opensource software.  Patents postpone
this development by twenty years.

Actually mpegla.com and mp3licening.com are, as you point out correctly,
examples of fairly equitable patent usage.  Yet, this type of usage may be
even more dangerous than the full outright civil war type.   It means that
in a few years we may face consortia of people who pool their patents on
"OS programming", "memory managment programming" etc and collect a tax on
anyone who does memory programming.  There are thousands of memory
programming patents at the EPO, on which almost any programmer will
infringe.  So in a few years time we may arrive at the stage where the
proprietary mode of "per copy licensing" is the only mode in which
programming will be at all possible.  You may survive in a civil war of
all against all, but you may hardly be able to keep releasing programs if
there are big consortia who professionally exploit a whole
fine-meshed network of software patents.  And that is where the market
forces are going.

To speak about "preferred treatment for the Opensource Community" may
sound quite cynical under those conditions.

Apparently you, Prof Endres, and some other university professors like
Prof Mayr at the head of GI, are dreaming of this scenario, because it
could allow your universities to collect taxes through patent consortia.
This is an understandable desire, given that governments have been cutting
back support for universities.  But it is also a vicious circle.  The more
you accept this way of thinking, the less the governments will see a
reason to support universities.  Why not instead let IBM and Microsoft do
the work of the universities?  Why universities in the first place, if
they are not to foster free diffusion of information that benefits all of
society?

-phm