Subject: Re: IPR at IETF 54

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 07:54:49 -0600 (MDT)

> From: [email-masked]

> > In still other words, don't you remember the years of pain
> > Motorola/Codec caused PPP with those two bogus patents?
>
> I guess what I was asking was how the IETF would feel about an organization
> grabbing a patent on an algorithm and using it the same way the GNU crew
> uses copyright on source code.  (Remember - the GNU copyright only works
> for *code* - since algorithms can be (at least in the US) patented but not
> copyrighted, you'd have to do a similar stunt with a patent).
>
> (And yes, this would be a case of "the Good Guys file a bull-manure patent
> to pre-empt the Evil Guys from filing a bull-manure patent" - but until the
> Patent Office gets their act together we're stuck with borked software patents
> that are invalid due to prior art, etc....)

In theory that could happen.  It may have happened in practice with
the Ethernet patent.  But what's the point?  What is gained by
winning such a patent from government(s) compared to publishing
the same document, other than a year or three of jumping through
hoops and plenty of money and hassles?

If you look at patents, you soon see that there's nothing special about
software patents and that the problems with the system are more than
100 years old.  What would you expect from giving lawyers and government
bureaucrats (specifically including examiners) the responsibility and
authority to determine the validity (e.g. no perpetual motion) and
novelty of other people's ideas?  Government central planning of
economies is more or less dead (for now), but government central planning
for science and technology lives in the West.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 31 May 2002 12:03:51 -0400

> hoops and plenty of money and hassles?

The problem is that you can publish the same document, and then some
sleazeball competitor patents it, because the patent office does such
a poor job of researching "prior art".

If http://www.bustpatents.com didn't have a reason to exist, I'd agree with you.