Re: [Patents] P2P Storm Clouds Brewing

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

> Any proof of this strateggy?  There already have been hundreds of P2P
> patents issued to a variety of companies, many of the patents dating
> back to the 1980s (P2P is an old technology, despite the fantasies of
> some).  While Microsoft has been getting a few such patents, so is
> everyone else (including a fair number of "open source" companies). On
> the other hand, if you have some data, how about sharing it with the
> rest of us?

It seems you have more data, so what about sharing them?
Especially concerning the "open source companies"?
Are you referring to IBM and Sun?

In order to refute the speculations concerning Microsoft's P2P strategy,
you would indeed need to show that there are substantial numbers of
patents that can be pooled and used against such a strategy.
Moreover there is no guarantee the oligopolists always go against each
other.  A single monopoly can be more profitable.  For this to happen it
is enough if one company is dominant in the area and can buy the others'
cooperation.

Also, you usually say that what is patented is really old stuff -- to say
that is your profession and are probably mostly right.  But yet these
patents are still effective, and it is usually enough if some tiny
difference to the prior art documents can be found for them to even
survive court battles -- sometimes with a few bruises but still menacing
enough.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch                                          http://phm.ffii.org/
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
100,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/