Re: [Patents] pooling patents for progress and protection

[Peter Vandenabeele <peter.vandenabeele@mind.be>]

On Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 11:10:24AM +0100, Alexandre Dulaunoy wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Dec 2002, Peter Vandenabeele wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Dec 29, 2002 at 10:20:35PM -0200, riel@nl.linux.org wrote:
> > > Here is a rough sketch of an idea I have to end the predatory
> > > practices that are effectively keeping the small inventor and
> > > small software companies from the market.  For now it is a rough
> > > plan, none of the details have been worked out yet.  Comments
> > > are always welcome...
> > > 
> > > 
> > >   Pooling patents for progress and protection
> > > 
> > >           Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>
> > >                   december 26-30, 2002
> > 
> > Rik,
> > 
> > I fully support the idea, but I already patented it ... [joke !!], and I 
> > am 
> > sure there is years of prior art on this idea; but I didn't see it 
> > implemented 
> > on a large scale.

[...]
> We have made some test around  RF licensing with no success at all for
> the Free  Software. It's really  difficult to gain a  non-revocable RF
> licensing from patent owners. (http://www.ael.be/node.php?id=52)

Alex,

I quickly checked the mentioned page. I think it exactly proves the point that
Rick amd myself are making (if I correctly understood what Rick is 
suggesting). 
You just friendly _ask_ these patent holders to grant a Royalty Free (RF) 
license, 
without exercising pressure or giving something tangible in return (a 
friendly 
mention on your site is just not enough as a compensation for them to give up
the restrictive licensing of the patent). 

What I suggest is that we build up (pro)-actively a force of power that also 
holds
a number of controlling elements (patents and maybe also Copyrighted Software 
with
a special license), that can be used as an element of power to have something 
to
negotiate with. 

When we don't have that, we are just poor people, begging for the large 
corporations
or universities (for who the patent portfolio is considered of paramount 
value), to
give away a major element of value. Indeed, it will be very difficult to get 
that from 
them, without either pressure or giving something tangible in return that 
they would 
not get without this agreement.

Another element that I had in mind, but not yet suggested (sorry upfront if 
this is 
an old idea that I did no encounter yet):

One element that we can also add (and where we could be _much_ better at than 
the
average patent examiner that has only limited time to examine a case), is an 
extensive, detailed, searcheable database/library (I do not mean an SQL 
database, 
but rather an ordered collection of information) of software implementations 
that
could be used by us to allow us to do fast, exact searches of prior art if we 
want
to enter patents ourselves and that we can use to precisely pin-point prior 
art
if new SW patents come out that are preceeded by prior art in our library. 

In the ultimate case, we could have a "Shadow Patent Office" that could 
critique every 
new SW patent with very specific prior art, just as the UK has a shadow 
government, 
organized by the opposition parties. This is one element that would not cost 
us direct 
money, but rather a lot of people's help to organize the information and work 
on the 
issued patents (you don't have to be a legal specialist to find out earlier 
technical
implementations of an idea; you have to know the technical field for that). 
This is 
a task that is tremendous for a single SME, but could be efficiently scaled 
over 
different groups world-wide, since the research only has to be done once for 
each
patent granted (they are pretty similar in all countries). Each group could 
be looking 
at a certain aspect of SW patents (using the categories used by the patent 
office). Again, 
this is not fun, but may be a required action to defend Free SW against SW 
patents.

> We could dig in the idea but only if the current battle is lost... 

I agree, but the fight is on a different level. We cannot be guaranteed that 
we will
convince politicians at this time with our arguments (I am pessimistic about 
it), but 
we can at least have a guarantee that if we form a s succesful, large enough 
body of 
SW patents in a world-wide Free SW Industry Association (or some "world-wide 
virtual 
Free SW company" that shares one aspect of business), we will gain tremendous 
power 
and not longer be begging politicians to listen to our point of view, but 
rather force 
patent holders, case by case, and with equal weapons to let alone Free SW 
(and here I
am getting near the argument of Gregory that the Free SW community and 
businesses should 
have equal weapons to fight, although that was probably meant in another way).

> have a nice day. 

You too :-)

Peter

> adulau
> 
> -- 
> --                          Alexandre Dulaunoy -- http://www.foo.be/
> --         http://pgp.ael.be:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x44E6CBCD
> "People who fight may lose.People who do not fight have already lost." 
>                                                       Bertolt Brecht