Re: [Patents] pooling patents for progress and protection

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

El Wed, Jan 01, 2003 at 11:14:40PM +0100, Peter Vandenabeele deia:
> On Wed, Jan 01, 2003 at 02:06:41PM -0200, riel@nl.linux.org wrote:
> > On Wed, 1 Jan 2003, Xavi Drudis Ferran wrote:
> > > 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
> > 
> > I wish you lots of fun spending your life one step behind reality
> > and complaining how you never seem to be able to catch up with the
> > system.
> > 

Thanks. I wish you lots of fun trying to build an antipatent juggernault,
while the people you voted act against you.

> > Note that a patent pool would also be useful inside the USA. You
> > might not care about the USA now, but you will once you try to sell
> > a product to the US and suddenly have to play the patent game...
>


I don't care so much about the USA as about the EU because I don't get 
to vote USA legislators. 

 
> I see following intermediate conclusions:
> 
> 1. Yes, in Europe we should fight to limit the impact of SW patents. If it 
>    works, this will help those companies that limit their activities in 
> Europe 
>    and more importantly it will give a signal to other countries that at 
> least 
>    one major economic block is doing without SW patents. But for my 
> business 
>    (embedded), there is in most cases a "technical/physical/material 
> effect" 
>    outside of the software that is driven/controlled from the SW, so I even 
>    doubt if there is not already a problem with the current status in 
> Europe.
>    Also, we are starting to operate outside of Europe (USA), so the 
> European 
>    case is only of partial interest for us.
>

I think there is no such problem with the current EU law, but it is with the 
current EPO practice. If you believe the technical effect dogma anything 
will be patentable. We must restore the use of technicity criteria. See (if 
not 
read already):
 
http://swpat.ffii.org/analysis/invention/index.en.html

>    - "giving away" the rights to use/copy/modify/distribute our software to
>      those companies that will later use SW patents to sue us
> 
>      (I would love to see all the bad guys in these horror stories being
>       forbidden to use any Free Software; they would quickly understand
>       the value of the system they are attacking; e.g. there are virtually 
>       no companies that have not somewhere included parts of BSD code in
>       their programs or are using some form of Free SW in their operations.
>       Not the least Microsoft that used the BSD tcp/ip stack in their OS.)
>

This is all nice and well. But having to decide which guys are good and which 
are bad is not so easy, getting and using patents isn't also, and having to 
centralize it all in a single bad guys police (the institution enforcing the 
license or suing for patent infringements by bad guys) is quite infeasible. 
The good 
in free software is that it is free for all to use. If you break this, you 
break the concept. And (less important) some of the big companies contributing
to free software are pushing for software patents and using them. What should 
distributions do with software that not everybody can use?. Should we get 
debian non-US plus debian non-bad-guy ?. 

Besides, what stops bad guys from spawning parasites and doing software 
development/use
as one company and patent policy as another?. Are you going to look to 
corporation
owners?. Who benefits from their patent policy?
       
>       (As an example: Why should we give the BSD tcp/ip stack for free to 
>       Microsoft, if they do not want to give the right to use the CIFS 
>       protocol to certain Free SW implementations ? This is where pacifism 
>       ends and realism should start).
>

We should not give anything to anyone but what is ours. The BSD licensed 
software
authors choosed to give it to them, and that is their choice, I'm sure they
are aware of the GPL and do not want to even restrict that kind of 
modification 
of their code, why should they care to get and use patents against the "bad 
guys"?.

I know most free software is under GPL, which means people are generally less 
willing to let their software become non-free. But we have no warranty that 
they will switch.

Anyway, I'm not against including clauses against software patents in 
copyright licenses of free software. It is a good idea. I'm only trying to say
it does not really solve the problem. The solution is in the law, not in the 
licenses.
      
>    - looking for patent-free alternatives and give them away again (again
>      with the asymmetry that we cannot use their "inventions", but they can
>      still freely use our "inventions"),
>    

Sometimes. But that is like when somebody shoots at you. You can try to keep 
jumping and avoid the bullets. But there are two more likely options: dying 
or getting the shooter to lose her gun. And then there is the more usual 
option, shooting at her, so that you both end up dead.

>    - even patent our-selves the better implementations that we develop
>      (I know this may sound as blasphemy, but it may be required eventually;
>       by filing the patent-claim, it will also show up more easily in the 
>       prior art searched of the examiners))
>

I think this is out of reach and out of purpose for most free software 
developers.
 
>    and use the money we gain from the cross-licensing of these Copyrighted
>    and patent protected works to:
> 
>    - keep that organisation running
> 
>    - take over the risks that individuals cannot carry. 
> 
>    - pay legal fees for patenting certain "inventions" if that would be
>      deemed usefull (this idea is arguable)
>    
>    - pay the legal fees for individuals that are under legal attack.
> 
>    - make understand that Free SW is of paramount value to the operation
>      of the economy and that is not a good idea to attack it with SW
>      patents (we may be more efficient by given the proprietary businesses
>      that use SW patents, a mirrored demonstration of how detrimental this 
>      system can be to their innovation than just preach in the desert).
>

Wow. I wonder why I'm being called the not realist guy. 
    
>    It will take some time before this organisation will be set-up and it 
> will be
>    a major challenge to get it organised, but until SW patents are 
> abolished, 
>    this will eventually have to be our practical defense.
>

What I'm trying to suggest is that getting software patents abolished or not 
legalised
is less of a challenge. I may be wrong, and of course I'm not going to stop 
you trying.


-- 
Xavi Drudis Ferran
xdrudis@tinet.org