Re: [Patents] pooling patents, version 2

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

On Thu, Jan 02, 2003 at 01:45:05AM +0100, Peter Vandenabeele wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 01, 2003 at 09:46:07PM -0200, riel@nl.linux.org wrote:
> > Changed after feedback from many people
> > 
> > 
> >     Pooling patents for progress and protection
> >                     version 2
> > 
> >             Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>
> >                     december 26-30, 2002
> >                     january      1, 2000

[...]
> An important goal of the association should be to gain a considerable 
> amount 
> of money to be able to:
> 
> - operate the organisation on the highest professional level
> - pay the legal costs to file patents on the ideas developed in 
>   Free SW community (currently this is not done on a large scale
>   and who will pay that ?)
> - defend Free SW contributors (pay legal defense)
> - attack parties that violate the conditions stated above

Just to make it more specific. As I told that 2 of or board members
(p2 and myself) see patent litigation against us as the largest business 
risk for our SME (not that we have been threatened, but in general it is 
a permanent risk that could hit us at any time), I would gladly spend e.g. 
600 EURO/year to get the advantages I list below in return. 

The contract could be:

we promise:
-----------
- to contribute any patents we may have (we have none) to the organisation.

- to propose to the association any potentially "patentable ideas" for
  inclusion in the portfolio of the organisation (the organisation will
  pay for the patent filing, so its their decision to take it up or not).

- not to attack anyone based on our patents (actually we don't have any
  patents left, they all moved to the organisation).

- to pay membership fees/contract fees (e.g. 0.1% of revenue).

we get back:
------------
- a license to use all the patents in the portfolio of the organisation

- a license to use all code that is licensed under a license that is related
  to the abstention of patent based litigation against Free SW.
  
- guaranteed legal defense up to a certain maximum amount when we are 
attacked 
  by any party based on patent claims (and maybe also Copyright claims ??). 
In 
  that legal defense, we or the organisation could then use all patents in 
its 
  portfolio to maximize the effectiveness of the counter-strike and the 
deterent
  effect.


If the contract ends, then:

- the patents already with the organisation, remain with the organisation
- the patents we contributed cannot be used against us (we remain to have
  a RF license on the patents we contributed ourselves)
- we might lose the official license to use the other patents just as any
  other outsider (depending on the case, this may be used against us or not).
- we would need to pay our own defense if required, including the continuating
  of running cases.

I see this mainly as "legal insurance" and I ma prepared to pay this kind
of money on it and maybe even more, depending on what I get in return.
It would be nice to have feedback from other Free SW SME's and developers how 
much they would be willing to pay for such legal insurance against patent 
claims. 
On top, once the patent pool is large enough, you could actually force the 
larger companies to contribute financially, to further strengthen the 
organisation (but if well organized, many of them might actually be interested
by themselves in getting this kind of ocntract). The net effect would be
that the maximum amount for legal defense would go up strongly and the
membership would become an increasingly strong deterent to attack a member
of the organisation.

If this organisation existed and was functional, it would give me great relief
of the current worries I have about SW patents. This is the aspect where, 
even 
competing, Free SW businesses and individual developers need to unite to 
jointly 
fight the Dark Force.

Peter