Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Chiling patents

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:2/28/2000; 3:14:52 AM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 2/27/00
Msg #:15301 (In response to 15294)
Prev/Next:15300 / 15302

I'll take my chances on the market. I won't add lawyers to my development team. We move too fast for that. Ultimately the users will get disgusted with companies that deny them choice by using lawyers and patents as competitive weapons. When the dust settles on this I want to be on the right side. I remember the customer backlash against copy protection in the 80s. Ultimately the customers will dictate here, imho.

Jakob, would you help inform the users of the issues of patents? Are you still going to buy products from Amazon? Will you say what you think of their practices on your page at Amazon? What about your patents? Does Sun own them? If you own patents, what do you plan to do with them?

And what do you say to companies that have patents? How do you feel about Amazon trying to stop their competitors from using 1-Click? Never mind what others plan to do, what do you plan to do?

Would you like to join me in drafting a statement for patent holders that they can agree to about fair use of their patents? (That is, for defensive purposes only.) I bet most of Amazon's competitors would sign such a statement, and that's a pretty good set of companies. What about Yahoo? They own some killer patents. What do they plan to do with them? And AOL, etc. Even Microsoft has been playing the game.

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