Re: [DMCA_Discuss] Re: [Patents] IT World Feature: Patently ridiculous: What's Europe to do?

["Nick Fleming" <Nick@bigfatpanda.fsnet.co.uk>]

> Patents  provides means for  the technical inventions become known to
public
> that otherwise would tried to be kept as trade secret and hidden.

No, patents provide a means for an individual or a
company to obtain a monopoly on an "invention"
(or these days, anything you can
get the patent office to issue a patent for).

Reading patents often does *not* make you any the wiser as
to what the invention does or how to reproduce it as they
are often written in legal jargon that means absolutely nothing
to most of the public.

Its a myth that the patent system benefits
the public - it doesn't.

Most patented inventions are coupled with trade secrets
in some way (if the company is smart) so that even if you
know the invention backwards it might be useless in
practice. This is particularly relevant to software, as
companies tend to patent PART of the application
while keeping the rest protected by trade secrets,
draconian licence agreements and reverse engineering laws.

>With the
> mandatory publication of  patents, competitors see each other's search
areas
> and collaborate their work toward new technologies like DVD. There are at
> least 10 huge cooperation behind development and standardization of DVD.
> Perhaps they hate each other because of being competitors, but because of
> patents, their development activities gets connected.

Usually large companies cross licence their
patents to prevent lawsuits, or to get a foot in the
door of a new emerging market.
(Give us this technology or we'll sue..etc..)
The result of this is usually that the large companies
such as philips, sony, hitachi effectively lock out any smaller
companies this way. Then they further lock out other
companies by adding trade secrets on top of. that.
So I don't think patents particularly
promote inter-company cooperation.
They are good for maintaining cartels though.
DVD is not an open standard either. It is fiercely
controlled by just a few companies, By the time DVD
falls into the public domain I would put good money on
their being NO DVD players available on the market,
as the media companies will have moved their content
onto another format that they can own/control.

>There are 1000s of
> patents owned by 10s of different companies made the technology evolve in
to
> such products as DVD player. The end user pays one time may be $20 more in
> addition to cost of the DVD player for the royalties (like appreciation to
> technology/donation to creators)  that for the patents cost zillions of
> dollars to develop. Now a days even better technologies like "blue-disk"
has
> been developped which are financed by the collected royalties. And of
course
> it  is also based on many patents.

I think its a myth that patents are required to pay for R & D.
Sony + Nintendo makes its money by selling hardware
below cost price but charges producers for the right to publish
software on the hardware. E.g. profit is made on the sale of
software not the hardware. With DVD's, the price of the DVDs
(movies) themselves is vastly inflated achieving the same result.
The patents are usually used in this case to prevent too many
competitors entering the market, which would have an effect
on software sales (more competitors = smaller market share =
fewer sales = harder to recoup R & D + make profits)

> In my opinion civilizations which are adopted and respected IPR in early
> times, now have the leading technologies. If there is a undiscovered clan
> hidden in some rainforest living the same exact way for generations after
> generations, they haven't discovered benefits of appreciating to IP yet.
> Other way of saying this is cultures which haven't respected to IP has
very
> insignificant contribution toward making human life better on this planet.

This is totally wrong. The countries which have
the leading technologies have historically plundered the
poorer countries for their IP then enforced
various treaties to ensure that they maintain the
IP (and are still doing it). Examples ? Japanese firms
trying to patent Indian curry receipes,
Americans patenting .....everything in sight - and
then probably extending the terms indefinately
(as they have been doing with copyright), to their
own selfish advantage. which means that the poorer
nations are unable to compete.
It's not just countries which suffer either. Individual workers
at a company are finding that the company owns
EVERYTHING they produce - literally making
people slaves to the company they work for,
 and worse, having no rights to their own
inventions when they leave the company.

I think it is fair to say that successful capitalist
cultures are successful because they ruthlessly
exploit IP, while ignoring some basic human rights.
They certainly dont make the world a better place,

Patents are not, in any sense, a moral right.
They are designed to restrict  peoples freedoms for a
limited time to ensure a company has a monopoly
(in return for paying the government a fee).

> Like anything else, even IP gets deteriorated in time because of some
> "system abusing" people. So the old patent and other IP regulations needed
> to be modernized to make it bullet proof and provide better life for every
> body not for a small group.

The problem with the current system is that it is too
easy to get a patent on just about anything.
The recent patents given on swings, wheels, pie charts and other
everyday items show just how far into absurdity the
patent system has gone. Also, the rules regarding what
constitutes prior art sometimes means that a patent
gets granted regardless of existing prior art...and that
is assuming of course that the owner of the prior art
hasn't been paid to either destroy it or at least withhold
it from public viewing.

Sorry for the long rant.. The short version would
be "IP laws are not necessarily a good thing". :-)

regards,

Nick Fleming.