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From: "Florian Mueller" <florian.mueller@nosoftwarepatents.com>
To: "'niclas'" <lists@datenritter.de>
Cc: "'bxl'" <bxl@ffii.org>, <patents@aful.org>
Subject: RE: best anti-swpat article ever!
Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 06:21:54 +0100
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> we forgot to ask for a limit on validity periods for *unused* patents. 
it should be possible to attack patents which are not used for 
industrial purposes. <

Not really a practical solution.  There are two problems about that:

1) If someone holds a patent, then it's legitimate, like for someone who
owns a copyright, to take some time until he has the right product in place
that is really marketable.  You can make an "invention" but still have 10
years ahead of you until you have a marketable product because you still
need to do a lot more R&D.

2) Even if you had a time limit until you first put out your product, you'd
have to prove that the patent has not been used to a sufficient degree.  If
that were the law, it could be circumvented by some pseudo-products that
someone creates in order to say "I produced and marketed something".

Florian


-----Original Message-----
From: niclas [mailto:lists@datenritter.de] 
Sent: Friday, November 05, 2004 12:43 AM
To: Florian Mueller
Cc: 'bxl'; patents@aful.org
Subject: Re: best anti-swpat article ever!

this quote shows the one thinhg we have forgotten:

"General Electric have hundreds and hundreds of patents on [diaphragm] 
valves. Most have never been made and I suspect they never intended to 
make them. What they've done is create a sterile area that noone else 
can play in."

we forgot to ask for a limit on validity periods for *unused* patents. 
it should be possible to attack patents which are not used for 
industrial purposes.

just think about all those wonderful hightech-products we could have, if 
the patents blocking people from creating them became all invalid after 
3 years "in the drawer".

i am not sure though, if it could be possible to add this to patent law 
without breaking international treatys.

n.


