🚀 go-pugleaf

On 13 Aug 92 10:24:33 GMT, friedman@gnu.ai.mit.edu (Noah Friedman) said:

friedman> The other concern is that IBM presently owns more software
friedman> patents than any other company I know of.  It appears that IBM
friedman> is mainly interested in using those patents in order to get
friedman> cross licenses. [ ... ]

friedman> "You get value from patents in two ways," says Roger Smith,
friedman> IBM Assistant General Counsel, intellectual property law.
friedman> "Through fees, and through licensing negotiations that give
friedman> IBM access to other patents.

friedman> "The IBM patent portfolio gains us the freedom to do what we
friedman> need to do through cross-licensing--it gives us access to the
friedman> inventions of others that are the key to rapid innovation.
friedman> Access is far more valuable to IBM than the fees it receives
friedman> from its 9,000 active patents.  There's no direct calculation
friedman> of this value, but it's many times larger than the fee income,
friedman> perhaps an order of magnitude larger."

Which brings back my idea that perhaps the LPF could use the patent
system to develop a strong "free" patents portfolio to be cross licensed
only in exchange for public access to other companies' patent
portfolios.

I am quite confident that many, many academic and even commercial
inventors would be happy to have their work patented in the name of the
LPF to this end, instead of putting their inventions in the public
domain, where they cannot be used to extract concessions from
proprietary patent owners.

This is quite similar to that thr FSF does; it has a strong portfolio of
copyrighted software that is only avaiable to those that make available
their own works in the same way (the analogy is not perfect of course).

The first time I put out this idea Stallman said that patents are
expensive, unlike copyrights, and therefore developing a free patent
portfolio was beyond the means of the LPF, or the FSF for that matter.

Has the situation changed? Would maybe the EFF pitch in? What about a
funding drive? Many small companies believe their one competitive
advantage is a patent, many more know instead that it is very hard to
get anything done without risking a patent infringement suit from a much
larger established compatitor. They might want to support a drive to
develop a strong portfolio of "free" patents.
--
Piercarlo Grandi                   | JNET: pcg@uk.ac.aber
Dept of CS, University of Wales    | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@aber.ac.uk