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

[Volkan Yüksel (ARGE-VESTMAN) <volkan.yuksel@vestel.com.tr>]

Dear Mr Fleming,

I thank you for your kind comments. I don't insist on my views too much but
I like to state my counter arguments to your responses


> > 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.
         
        [Volkan Yüksel (ARGE-VESTMAN)]   Well, if an examiner can understand
it, the "technical" public should be able to understand it as well. For
example a friend of mine is making dental cameras using cheap  webcams and
he is getting the knowledge from the foreign patents. The problem is public
does not now how to acces to patent data bases which are freely available.
(epo.org) With todays IT, every technical person should chek the patent in
their interest area. I don't think many enginners or small technical firms
doing this and than re-inventing the whell on their own.
>    
> 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/contro  
> 
> >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)
> 
        [Volkan Yüksel (ARGE-VESTMAN)]  Yes, patents may create monopoly to
big companies but who are working on these big companies? aliens? :-) , no
human beings! And they usualy pay taxes which the whole civilization
benefits. So the money generated remains on this planet, in time it spreads
from rich to poor. 

> > 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.
> 
        [Volkan Yüksel (ARGE-VESTMAN)]   Realy poor contries benefit from
big guys high tech toys since they have no fear of copyrights or patents and
they produce infringing goods and do trade like crazy . Because in those
countries there is nobody to enforce IP rights. Look at China. I belive they
can make exact copy of anything on this planet even space shuttle!!. (Just
kidding)

> 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". :-)
        [Volkan Yüksel (ARGE-VESTMAN)]  Thank you for the long rant. I think
without patents we would be still in stone age :-)


> regards,
> 
> Nick Fleming.
> 
>