Re: [Patents] pooling patents for progress and protection

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

On Wed, Jan 01, 2003 at 12:08:47PM +0100, Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:
> 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
> 
> ?

I checked part of it and it revealing (and shocking). Some links don't work 
anymore.
There is work at hand there to clean up the links or add local mirrors if the
original documents where pulled off the web.

> > 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.

The general concepts of cross-licensing of patents will be similar. I am 
curious
how they do that, since all large companies in a certain field have some 
patents,
so effectively they all have to enter some cross-licensing agreements, even 
if 
in the field they are harsh competitors.

Peter