Re: [Patents] US patent reform strategy inaugurated by myths & lies

[Gregory Aharonian <srctran@world.std.com>]

>Of course they can, and they have been threatened with cease-and-desist
>letters quite often.

As are many companies in most letters, who routinely get letters from
patent owners asking for a license, threatening to sue, or something
similar.  So you do what these companies do, ignore the letter, or
send back a nasty letter if the patent is crappy, or fight back.

>Maybe Greg thinks that as long as sw developers are not actually sitting
>in jail their complaints can be attributed to "paranoid fantasies".

That's right, fantasies.  I don't remember the details of the East German
case, but if the East German person got a letter from a patent holder in
any other country other than East Germany, he should have a) ignored the
letter as totally impotent, or b) wrote a letter back saying that the
patent holder's patent has no jurisdiction in (East) Germany and that
the patent holder can fuck off.

> But the existence of the threat had bad enough effects.

Yea, really economically marginal effects that politicians can and are
safely ignoring.  If you bother to do some business research, or any
research at all, you will find that the negative effects of software
patents are probably less percentage in the software industry than the
negative effects of patents in other industries.  You are inventing
non-existent economic threats.  For those who have changed their
software development plans because of stupid patents, if there was
no legal grounds for action because of the stupid patent, then those
that changed their plans were just as stupid as the patents.

But less stupid than some of the exaggerated fantasies susbcribed to
software patent.  And for the record, I am still the only person
actually sued for software patent infringement for using open source
software.

Until you have some real economic data showing significant negative
economic effects of software patents (as isolated from other plagues
on software businesses like having lousy business models, downturns
in the economy, regular competition, etc.), no serious politicians
is going to pay any attention to your arguments.  And ancedotal
data is not serious.  Which is all you have.  Because you ain't serious.

Greg Aharonian