🚀 go-pugleaf

Discussions about patent law often involve anti-software-patent folks
complaining about things they presume are law, rather than looking up
the law.

Without intending to single out Mr. Waters specifically, here are a
couple of counter-presumptions which are also incorrect.

   Date: 28 Feb 91 19:57:49 GMT
   From: waters@nddsun1.sps.mot.com (Mike Waters)

   In article <1991Feb28.111753.2@minerva.inesc.pt> fmhv@minerva.inesc.pt (Fernando Manuel Vasconcelos) writes:

   [...]
   If you sell the code then you take your chances just like any other
   business. If you give it away without charge there is no profit in
   suing you is there?

In fact, patentholders can sue people distributing material
incorporating techniques covered by patents they hold.  While this is
less likely to be an issue with, say, steelmaking, it is relevent to
software, where a company may use a patent to try to lock onto a
marketplace, and would sue to attempt to prevent the distribution of a
free alternative.

(note by the way that it is difficult to use a patent to lock up a
market becuase of the antitrust issues.  However you could probably
use this to prevent a free product because such a product would not
bring you royalties).

So software patents could prevent the spread of free software, even
were it freely developed before the patent was issues (as long as it
was after the patent was filed).

   >The first one adresses those who would have to grant the patents:
   >For those the problem would be: What criteria will we use to grant
   >a patent ? This is a difficult problem to solve. 

   A problem which has been hashed out in every country of the world, with
   remarkable similarity in the results - the present patent system!

In fact the Australian government studied the patent system a few
years ago and decided that it no longer assisted progress, but rather
hindered it.  They decided to keep their patent system largely intact
because they feared a trade embargo by the United States, not because
they felt it would help competition.

So grab that book before you grab the keyboard!
-d