🚀 go-pugleaf

jb3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Jon Allen Boone) writes:
> mathew@mantis.co.uk (Industrial Poet) writes:
> > 3% total shared amongst the patent-owners?  Doesn't work.  My program uses
> > 1000 trivial patented ideas, 999 of which belong to me and were filed in
> > order to reduce the amount I'll have to pay to other people.
> 
>   First, this assumes a *COMPETENT* patent office - which would *NOT*
> allow you to file 999 *TRIVIAL* patents.

It is demonstrably the case that we cannot assume that the patent office will
be competent, so *I* am not assuming it.

>                                           Besides, if you could come
> up with 999 *NON-TRIVIAL* inventions, you (according to some model of
> the universe) deserve to reap some benefit from sharing them with us.

Right.  But what happens then is that the big companies just make sure they
include 999 useless features which they happen to own the patent on -- that
is, nice ideas which are useless for this particular piece of software -- so
that they hardly pay anything to the one guy whose big idea they use.

Whereas the lone inventor doesn't have 999 patents, so he's screwed.

The net result is to reward those who have lots of useless or semi-useless
patents and plenty of lawyers, and to encourage the inclusion of redundant
features rather than innovative ideas.  Companies with lots of patents are
able to use those patents to reduce the amount they pay to other people,
hence keeping their patent fees low; small companies can't compete because
they have to give 5% of their profits away to start with.

In other words, the situation is no better than it is now.  Big companies
win, individuals and small companies lose.

Of course, it might force people to use GNU methods of software distribution,
since they might be better off charging for service rather than for the
product in order to avoid the patent fees.

> > 3% total shared amongst the patent owners, me excluded?  Doesn't work.  My
> > program uses 1000 trivial patented ideas, 999 of which belong to my friend
> > Richard.  Richard's programs use 1000 trivial patented ideas, 999 of which
> > belong to me.
> 
>   There is nothing wrong with this system - if your friend Richard (or
> my friend rms) can come up with 999 *NON-TRIVIAL* (remember, they are
> the only things getting patents under this model) ideas, and you come
> up with 999 *NON-TRIVIAL* ideas and you guys wanna "cross-license" -
> that's your loss - literally.

The problem with this is that it's much like the situation we have now; big
companies like IBM can do what they like, because they have so many patents
that you can't make anything without infringeing one of them.  But the small
companies can't enter the market, because they have no patents to trade in
order to let them get the permission to use the vital patents owned by the
big companies.

The only difference with the proposed 5% system is that the amount the big
companies could extort from the small companies would have an upper bound. It
still wouldn't let them compete on an even basis.

We shouldn't be giving big companies an economic advantage over small
companies AT ALL.


mathew