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

[Bernard Lang Bernard.Lang@inria.fr]

I do not want any public organization to be organized as a business.
This causes perversions.

The best example is the patent office that considers patent applicants
as customers.  But that is wrong : the patent office is a public
office working for the public ... but they forget that because their
money comes from somewhere else.

So universities have primary goals. They may engage in other pursuits,
as long as it remains compatible with the primary goals ... and they
should be wary of not inverting priorities.

As far as I recall, the Bayh-Dole act is not that old... but is it
good in the long run ... we'll see.  It is true on the other hand that
the US university system can survive by stealing people from other
countries, and paying them with the money saved on the crappy US
school system.

  I do not understand the logic actually. You want barriers on the
circulation of ideas, of techniques.  So you should want even stronger
barriers on the idea generators, obviously more valuable.  Hence you
should be against letting technically savvy people leave a country
before they are too old to be productive.  So you should oppose
immigration of scientists from other countries.
   Is that actually your position ?


On Fri, Dec 22, 2000 at 05:26:21PM -0500, Gregory Aharonian wrote:
> >Hartmut writes:
> >Why universities in the first place, if they are not to foster free
> >diffusion of information that benefits all of society?
> 
> So I assume Hartmut, that you don't want universities patenting 
> anything - no biotech patents, no software patents, no hardware patents?
> 
> >Why not instead let IBM and Microsoft do the work of universities?
> 
> Increasingly they might control everything, as people with new software
> and hardware ideas see all the profits and commercialization captured
> by IBM and Microsoft, whose entrenched clout makes it difficult to
> compete for startups and individuals.  Unless they have some effective
> protection, like a patent.  But if preserving the power and clout of
> large companies like IBM and Microsoft has been your goal all along, I
> withdraw this observation.
> 
> Greg Aharonian

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