Subject: Re: Patents

From: Gerry Gleason <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 18:00:31 -0600

Carl Vilbrandt wrote:

> Dear Francois,
> Thanks for your help in making the issues about patents very clear and 
> your very timely  suggestion ... :-) about timestamping the design. 

Thanks particularly for the link to the firstmonday article.  It took a 
while, but I got through it.  It really is quite frightening they way 
the patent system (US and Europe) is described to be largely 
unresponsive to any policy input.  I find it particularly striking that 
Lessig's speech doesn't say anything about this situation, as he pushes 
his audience to get more involved in policy matters with respect to 
patents and copyrights.  If this paper is reflecting the true nature of 
the situation, it doesn't look like either the USPTO or the EPO would be 
at all responsive to policy input, even from legislatures.

>
> I am not in favor giving money to the USPO and most certainly a patent 
> ( rather is it immaterial patent a complete outrage or a material base 
> patent ) that is owned or controlled by one person or one large 
> company should be avoided. 

Agreed.  The picture painted is of an entire system that only cares 
about propagating itself, with no regard for any of the important 
purposes they exist to serve.  It isn't even clear that anyone within 
the system realizes what has happened because everyone is focussed on 
their narrow specialty.

>
> FP is quiet right ..... Organis even if it is published through the 
> Osaka design competition as prior art could be  patented by moneyed 
> just to be shut down or extract money from Organis groups.  Putting a 
> patent on the Organis design would be a stratagem move that might 
> invite implementation funding ....... If we patent Organis it must be 
> done carefully.... If you patent the immaterial world it gives it a 
> monetary value so the immaterial world can be taken over by entities 
> with large financial resources. 

I'm a little confused here, you seem to be contradicting everything else 
to this point in the discussion, and why wouldn't publishing it in the 
design competition establish it as prior art with a timeframe?  The very 
fact that we are discussing it this way distributes the proof both to a 
number of people and on a number of systems, but your suggestion of 
printing, signing and dating would be good too.

>
> In the time being I would ask that all of us should date and print out 
> the most important parts of Organis design and sign them as the design 
> emerges in our e-mails.  As a disscuss@ggpl group we all have designed 
> Organis together it does not belong to any one of us, but all of us 
> and this gives some protection.  All of your names should appear on 
> the submission / publication to Osaka design completion (a large very 
> public event) makes it prior art and gives more protection from 
> patents.  The purpose's of the Osaka design completion are in concert 
> with the Organis.
>
>> The solution is to timestamp and/or publish its
>> specifications ASAP, to make prior art. This will
>> be as valid as prior art by patents, because you
>> do not want to exclude people from using Organis,
>> but just make sure that nobody prevents other people
>> including you from developing it.
>
The only ray of hope that I gleaned from the paper is that there are a 
lot of industries and companies that are very negatively effected by the 
current situation, and not just OS developers and companies.  What it 
says is that the complexity of the issues and the expensive and 
specialized experts means that only the largest companies are likely to 
have full time patent experts and most of the policy input originates 
from various trade associations.  So, it seems that education and 
research on the economic issues and other pressures must be brought to 
bear directly on the patent systems from the companies and trade 
associations.  Perhaps even IBM can be convinced to forgo the 
exploitation of their considerable portfolio of software patents for the 
benefit of their relationship with the Linux project and the goodwill of 
the community.

I'm coming to the conclusion that the whole patent issue is way bigger 
and more daunting than I first thought.  Although it will be challenging 
to convince a critical mass of the importance of the issues, and to push 
a plan of action that will actually change things, I don't see any other 
practical way to address the basic problems.

Gerry