From owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Thu Feb 10 14:53:37 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id OAA06991 for opl-discuss-list; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 14:53:37 -0500 Received: from guelah.nexen.com (guelah.nexen.com [204.249.96.19]) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id OAA06986 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 14:53:29 -0500 Received: from louie.stl.nexen.com (louie.stl.nexen.com [205.246.15.1]) by guelah.nexen.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA28174 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 14:53:27 -0500 (EST) Received: from dragon.stl.nexen.com (dragon [205.246.15.16]) by louie.stl.nexen.com (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id NAA23366 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:50:20 -0600 (CST) Received: from localhost (orrjl@localhost) by dragon.stl.nexen.com (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id NAA12425 for ; Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:53:25 -0600 (CST) Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000 13:53:25 -0600 (CST) From: Jay Orr X-Sender: orrjl@dragon To: opl-discuss@openpatents.org Subject: Hi (and a suggestion).. Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Precedence: bulk I saw info about this org on Slashdot and browsed your past mailing list. For my $0.02 worth, the concept of "cross-patents" seems flawed, much like communism because the premise is "if everyone...." . Someone is going to sell a patent or change their mind about opening it.. It would make sense to me to exploit the existing patent system as follows. Assuming software was developed by more then one person, one of the group tries to file a patent on the software while the others file to prove that it wasn't one person's conecpt and has pre-existing components - i.e. show source tree and each person's contributions. Since others who aren't getting the patent helped create it, no one person could patent it and the patent would be denied. The upshot is this would be is that all this would be documented in the patent office - all aspects of it. Then, no one could try to patent it in the future and anyone who did would face documented proof that they wern't the original innavator... ----------- Jay Orr Systems Administrator Fujitsu Nexion Inc. St. Louis, MO From owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Fri Feb 11 01:16:21 2000 Received: (from majordom@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id BAA13350 for opl-discuss-list; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 01:16:21 -0500 Received: (from mark@localhost) by primefactor.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id BAA13346; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 01:16:17 -0500 Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 01:16:17 -0500 From: Mark Shewmaker To: Jay Orr Cc: opl-discuss@openpatents.org Subject: Re: Hi (and a suggestion).. Message-ID: <20000211011617.A13079@primefactor.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: ; from orrjl@stl.nexen.com on Thu, Feb 10, 2000 at 01:53:25PM -0600 Sender: owner-opl-discuss@openpatents.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, Feb 10, 2000 at 01:53:25PM -0600, Jay Orr wrote: > I saw info about this org on Slashdot and browsed your past mailing list. > > For my $0.02 worth, the concept of "cross-patents" seems flawed, much like > communism because the premise is "if everyone...." . Someone is going to > sell a patent or change their mind about opening it.. Companies economically justify patent cross-licensing arrangements all the time. Overall, it should economically be to the advantage of participants for them to have licensed their patents via the OPL--ethical reasons aren't the entirety of the argument. Given that you gain royalty-free use of other patents, (given certain conditions), and (under most Options) don't give up future royalties of your own patents except under "friendly" OPL-ish conditions means that it's close to a complete win-win situation for all sides. I don't think it takes prescription-strength rose-colored glasses to think we have a good chance of convincing companies to save large amounts of money at very little risk by doing something highly ethical that will also remove restrictions on scientific and artistic progress. (BTW, as far as your concerns on a participant's selling a patent, I would like the OPL to require that participants submit the patents irrevocably--well, at least such that the submission becomes irrevocable if not revoked within a very limited time. It's not really fair for a company to base product and marketing plans on the claimed royalty-free availability of a set of patents--including their own--only for them to find out a year later that they'll have to pay 150% of their product price in royalties because some patents were removed. Submitting the patent under the OPL is a promise to all other participants that the patent will forever be available under the agreement after a certain timeout; I think that requirement is necessary for the system to work well.) > It would make sense to me to exploit the existing patent system as > follows. Assuming software was developed by more then one person, one of > the group tries to file a patent on the software while the others file to > prove that it wasn't one person's conecpt and has pre-existing components > - i.e. show source tree and each person's contributions. Since others who > aren't getting the patent helped create it, no one person could patent it > and the patent would be denied. > > The upshot is this would be is that all this would be documented in the > patent office - all aspects of it. Then, no one could try to patent it in > the future and anyone who did would face documented proof that they wern't > the original innavator... Much more simply, they could document everything at www.spi.org to show that they have done this supposedly-new technique, or they could even more simply publish the program as a way of documenting the technique. However, neither that shorter solution nor the solution you propose above, (even if I didn't object to it for other reasons), would prevent someone else from patenting an improvement on this supposedly-new technique and thus preventing the original team from using this new improvement. Had the team successfully patented their original technique, they might be able to come to some cross-licensing arrangement with the second patent holder, (who couldn't use his patent without violating the first patent.) I intend the OPL to provide a set of ways of licensing patents that will make these sorts of cross-licensing agreements easier to do, and make the agreements global instead of limited to two participants. So, the only choices I see for your original group above is for them to try to legitimately patent their supposedly-new invention and use their patent defensively (possibly gaining advantages through the use of the OPL), or for them to not try to patent it at all and merely establish prior art. Most individuals will probably still go with the don't-try-to-patent approach, since patenting is so expensive in both time and money, but if they do go the patenting route, I would hope they'd consider the OPL. However, I hope they *wouldn't* consider trying to patent something non-patentable simply to get the info into the (US)PTO's files. Not only is that not really ethical, (were all parties cooperating here?), it seems to me to be a waste of money as there are cheaper ways of disclosing information. (On both sides of the argument I'm ignoring the fact that patent-invalidating prior art doesn't necessary invalidate a patent without an expensive court case.) -Mark Shewmaker mark@primefactor.com