[CrackMonkey] [owen@ditherati.com: D I T H E R A T I for 26 April 2000]

[Seth David Schoen]

Don Marti writes:

> On Wed, Apr 26, 2000 at 05:44:12PM -0700, Seth David Schoen wrote:
> 
> > I'm sure David Friedman would say that there's an equilibrium
> > somewhere.  If a large company did what you propose, it would probably
> > shift the equilibrium so that patent holders would be reluctant to go
> > after _that company_ for patent infringement.  That doesn't
> > necessarily mean that they would be reluctant to go after _anyone_ for
> > patent infringement, though.
> 
> But then everyone else would say "hey, they're safe, all they had to do
> was FACE MARK STARR LIKE A MAN." They'd follow foo.com's example, either
> individually or as an industry consortium.
> 
> And as more companies resisted patents, the incentive to get them would
> plunge, leaving the freaks free to frolic.

This is tricky.

Whether to participate in a general anti-patent sentiment out of
self-interest depends on whether you think patents do you more harm
than good.

Although many patent holders have gotten patents mostly "out of
self-defense" (in practice, in order to have a portfolio to
cross-license or to use as ammunition for a potential countersuit
in order to scare off potential litigants), many patent holders
actually do want to enforce their patents.

At least one software company has said that software patents do
more harm than good.  But that's not necessarily the opinion
of many software companies.  And many patents aren't software
patents, and the badness of non-software patents is not
intuitive to many patent holders.

In fact, a recent LWN letter claims that patents are not only socially
beneficial, but also obviously a good thing for small inventors.  This
seems hard to argue with (on grounds other than the general idea that
there should be no property rights in ideas or information) -- a small
inventor can potentially make millions of dollars from a patentable
idea, but is unlikely to be charged millions of dollars in patent
license fees for others' inventions he or she would like to
practice in the ordinary course of life.

Let's talk more about patent economics at the Linuxstammtisch, if you
don't mind.

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>  | And do not say, I will study when I
Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/  | have leisure; for perhaps you will
down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF)  | not have leisure.  -- Pirke Avot 2:5