🚀 go-pugleaf

In <kh95dmINNjsf@agate.berkeley.edu> adam@soda.berkeley.edu (Adam J Richter) writes:

>In article <1991Nov1.151812.28814@freedom.msfc.nasa.gov> robichau@freedom.msfc.nasa.gov (Paul Robichaux) writes:
>>
>>In <216@news.duke.edu> magidj@cellbio.duke.edu (Jonathan Magid) writes:
>>>it seems to me, that if we had to reinvent the wheel everytime someone
>>>has patented an idea, the speed of technological developement would slow
>>>to a near-snail pace.
>>   
>>   BUT IT HASN'T. In the commercial world of engineering and product 
>>   development, if Company A develops some innovative material, process, or
>>   component, they can patent it. They may then choose to license it, or
>>   not, to other companies.

>	PERHAPS IT HAS.  There is normally no economic reason that
>a company will license a patent for less than the amount of money that
>they can take from the public by maintaining an absolute monopoly.  With
>some patents, this limit is small, but there are a lot of patents out
>there, and the social cost of giving out a million or so seventeen
>year monopolies on items that mostly would have been reinvented and
>publicized with, say, four year patent monopoly incentives (even
>factoring in "dead end" R&D

>	Besides the social cost due to the collection of unnecessary
>royalties, patents encourage oligopoly.  The big companies in an
>industry can cross-license their patent portfolios and carry on
>business as though most patents in their industry didn't exist, while
>not offering such convenience to newcomers.

   Fortunately for capitalism,  "big companies" don't necessarily have a
   monopoly on innovation. Big companies (IBM, McDonnell-Douglas, Apple)
   frequently license patents from smaller companies (NeXT, Polhemus,
   MindSoft).

   VPI comes to mind again. Could they have "taken" big bucks from the 
   public with a video-game-specific version of their DataGlove? Probably
   not- but by licensing their tech to a MUCH larger company, with the
   appropriate development/marketing/production infrastructure (Mattel),
   they still turned their knowledge into a succesful product.
   
>	Software is more of an extreme example because one can usually
>incorporate a new idea to a program in a matter of hours by modifying
>a few subroutines, so the potential progress lost by creating seventeen
>year monopolies is greater.  In addition some software patents, and
>all user interface copyrights, effect not just the way that a "black box"
>works internally, but also its external interface.  This is somewhat
>analogous to having monopolies on the layout of a typewriter keyboard
>or a car steering wheel.

    In some cases, a 17-year patent on a technology is very useful (cf.
    TI's microprocessor patent.) In other cases, it's not (cf. Atari's
    "PacMan" lawsuit vs. Magnavox.) Perhaps there's some intermediate
    length of time which would be more appropriate, and which would
    protect the innovator's effort and investment without forever 
    choking related innovations.

>>   My view of Apple's action is that they are attempting to preserve something
>>   which cost them a great deal of money to develop. They literally bet the
>>   company on the Macintosh interface, some of which was derivative and some
>>   original. THE IMPLEMENTATION WAS ALL ORIGINAL, folks.

>	What do you mean "THE IMPLEMENTATION [of the Xerox user
>interface] WAS ALL ORIGINAL?"  If you're arguing that they wrote their
>own source code, I'd like to point out that so did microsoft and
>Hewlett-Packard, to the best of my knowledge.

>	The law journal article that led to the UI copyright idea had
>not been written when Apple invested in a modified Xerox user interface
>and Lotus invested in a modified VisiCalc user interface.  There is no
>reason to believe that Apple's decision to invest in developing the
>Lisa and the Mac was based on the idea that they'd be able to stop
>people from developing products with a compatible user interface
>for other platforms.

>>   The meat of Apple's
>>   suit against Microsoft was that MS had duplicated elements of the Mac
>>   interface which Apple felt were unique- not anything so general as "over-
>>   lapping windows" or "pull-down menus."

>	As I recall, Apple is claiming that overlapping windows and
>pull-down menus are items on list of approximately fifty features
>which are violations of its UI copyright in MS Windows.  Apple does
>not claim that you need to use some minimum number of these features
>before they can sue you.  Whether or not you consider this to be
>"the meat", it had made graphical user interfaces a risky business
>proposition.

    Apple's specific claim is that Microsoft licensed elements of the
    Mac GUI for use in their Mac applications. Microsoft's specific
    claim is that the license entitled them to *copy* those elements
    and incorporate them into the Windows GUI. HP is along for the
    ride since they licensed the Windows GUI from MS.

>Adam J. Richter			adam@soda.berkeley.edu
>409 Evelyn Avenue, Apt. 312	....!ucbvax!soda!adam
>Albany, CA 94706		(510)528-3209
-- 
--
Paul Robichaux                  | Disclaimer: NTI pays for my skills, not my
robichau@freedom.msfc.nasa.gov  |             opinions.
     "Lit up with anticipation / We arrive at the launching site" - Rush