🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <GUMBY.91Mar3113623@Cygnus.COM> gumby@Cygnus.COM (David Vinayak Wallace) writes:
>Discussions about patent law often involve anti-software-patent folks
>complaining about things they presume are law, rather than looking up
>the law.

I agree heartily!

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

I make no claim to omniscience and am glad to be corrected when
required.

>   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.

I admit I forgot just which newsgroup this is and just who makes up the
"audience". Legally, of course, you are correct.

I was intending to address the implication (openly stated elsewhere)
that anyone who writes 10 lines of code will be sued for all they
posess. Of course that is nonsense.

I suspect that if ever a free system (such as GNU) gets to the point
where it seriously threatens "the big guys" then something like that
could indeed happen. I suspect though that legal prosecution or threats
of prosecution would not be the "weapon of choice" for someone out to
destroy or contain such an effort though. THings like deliberate system
incompatabilities, viruses, a "wispering campaign" about some subtle bug
etc. have all been used before in other circumstances and strike me as
being far more effective for far less cost. Just as unethical, but then
any such scheme would certainly be unethical.

>(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).

I suspect that the thrust would be more one of "containment", talk to
any Amiga owner for a reasonable parallel.

>   >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.

From what little I have seen of Australian politics (and the intense
exposure to Canadian parallels), I have to wonder if this wasn't more of
a nationalistic statement than a generic one. I.e. "we are paying all
these foreigners more than they pay us". I can think of a good dozen
examples (not patents) from Canadian politics in the last 20 years.

>So grab that book before you grab the keyboard!

Always good advice.

-- 
           *Mike Waters    AA4MW/7  waters@nddsun1.sps.mot.com *
If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?