🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Nov1.151812.28814@freedom.msfc.nasa.gov> robichau@freedom.msfc.nasa.gov (Paul Robichaux) writes:
>  [realize that I am new to this discussion and have not invested as much
>   time and thought as those who have participated longer. be gentle,
>   please.]
>
>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.

	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.

>   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.

Adam J. Richter			adam@soda.berkeley.edu
409 Evelyn Avenue, Apt. 312	....!ucbvax!soda!adam
Albany, CA 94706		(510)528-3209