Re: [Patents] pooling patents for progress and protection

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

El Mon, Dec 30, 2002 at 11:10:24AM +0100, Alexandre Dulaunoy deia:
> I will support  the idea only if the current  fighting is lost against
> software patents. ;-) 
>

Me too. 

I would even ask others to please delay this discussion possibly 
forever (if we convince our politicians not to allow software patents). 
I'm not so pessimistic as Peter on the chances of success. But anyway, 
I see little merit in this scheme. I don't see how all this framework 
of patent pools and people having to join an organization, etc. can 
work for free software, or any advantage on having lots of people 
fighting other lots of people over patents instead of simply 
making them all do something useful for society in exchange for their 
salary. 

If we get software patents, I see no way to protect free software. 
They are incompatible concepts, no matter what you do. If you have to 
play with patents you have to put restrictions on freedom in, so it 
is no longer free software, and you lose on ethical grounds as well 
as on whatever emergent effects the free software models have (free 
software competitivity, if you want). SMEs 
also lose, of course, even non-free software ones. And big players 
may well lose in front of parasites, specially taking into account 
the psycological effects on stocks and these sort of things (btw, 
I see no way this patent pool scheme could work against parasites, 
which could be corsaries on behalf of whatever player you try to 
fight). 

> 
> The  technical   (in  legal  term)  implementation   could  be  really
> difficult. 
>

And wasteful, and eventually useless, I'm afraid. But I may be wrong, 
since I haven't really thought about it, and I won't until the EU 
changes the law to allow software patents, which may never happen anyway, 
so I beg for "lazy evaluation" of this thread. We could do/are doing 
lots of other useful things.
 
> We could dig in the idea but only if the current battle is lost... 
>
Exactly.


-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis@tinet.org