Re: [Patents] pooling patents for progress and protection

[Xavi Drudis Ferran <xdrudis@tinet.org>]

El Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 10:50:19AM +0100, Peter Vandenabeele deia:
> 
> A practical questions: do we have strong examples of the practices described
> above ("the bullying of small companies"). One of the arguments that I 
> heard 
> against my reasoning is that as long as we don't make proprietary technology
> that will have huge licensing revenue streams, nobody will actually take 
> the 
> pain and the cost to sue us; only when we would have some proprietary 
> technology 
> that would happen, but in that case, we could also find investors that 
> would 
> be prepared to bear the cost of the legal defense. Do we have strong 
> examples, 
> where small or Free SW is bullied, even if it is not a technology that will 
> leverage a lot money (one example I see now is the patent based attack on 
> Samba, 
> where a Free technology is attacked and there is no large proprietay 
> revenue 
> stream from Samba licensing that could cover the expenses of the legal 
> defense).
>

It usually  won't take a suit to stop an SME from doing something or 
extracting 
royalkties. Simple private threats can be sufficient. That's why only a 
minimal 
part of the consequences surface. ANyway, have you looked at

http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/effects/index.en.html

?

> Patent pools and cross-licensing are classical methods in other industry 
> sectors,
> so we should learn more how it is operated in those industries (do they 
> allow
> for further cross licensing by one party of a pool, or should the entire 
> pool
> be part of further cross licensing ?). 
>

I doubt those sectors have the same economics as software. But I don't know.
 

-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis@tinet.org