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

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Re: Patents

Author:	Joshua Allen
Posted:	9/22/2000; 1:03:59 AM
Topic:	Patents
Msg #:	21627 (In response to 21625)
Prev/Next:	21626 / 21628

Thanks for the pointers to articles at http://www.researchoninnovation.org/online.htm; interesting! I had noticed the proliferation of cross-licensing and these papers give some good ideas why this may be. I think you may have convinced me, especially in very dynamic fields such as software. I am thinking there are some other reasons why cross-licensing takes place, but I like this information.

Imagine how I felt eight months later, the night before I was giving a presentation on my thesis, when I discovered that someone had built a startlingly similar system ten years ago!

Yeah, that is a problem with patents on process or algorithm. I usually assume that whatever idea I have has already been considered and implemented by others in the past. (Well, I admit I have had a very few that I think are globally unique). Patenting something like a business process seems ridiculous. With scientific things like crypto algorithms, there is an established community of peer review, so determining uniqueness is a bit easier. Then on the other hand, scientists tend to be motivated by things that patents don't attempt to guarantee. I doubt that Newton or Liebniz would have worked harder if they had felt they could get a patent on Calculus. Maybe _copyright_ is the real issue here... I guess I am getting confused :-)

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