keitai-l@appelsiini.net writes:
>Let courts and markets handle the Darwinian selection
>from there onward.
aha! - so that's why the mammals inherited the earth from the
veloceraptors - they had a bigger legal department...
And that's the problem with the view you are expounding - you pay lip
service to "the market" but it's really "lawyers red in tooth and claw" in
which a company with a large legal department and legal budget can
browbeat competitors whatever the merits of the patents they hold. (One's
attitude to this is perhaps a reflection on the role one thinks lawyers
should play in society generally - like most Englishman, I incline to
minimalism where the legal profession is concerned.)
You want to have a fairly low threshold for demonstrating that something
is patentable then let the lawyers fight it out afterwards. I want a
higher threshold so there is less need for recourse to lawyers later.
Throwing the real decisions to the courts
1) spreads F.U.D. ("can I really add this feature to that website - or
will I be sued - it seems obvious, but better not risk it...")
2) Increases costs (that legal department)
3) reduces innovation (companies are wasting resources on 2)
I am not suggesting that patents have NO place here - but the recent
RAMBUS debacle has shown that a determined company can browbeat MOST of
the competition most of the time. RAMBUS were unlucky that they had one
determined opponent - but it has taken a long time to bring them to heal.
Some may point to their recent court failure as a vindication of your
approach, to me it seems an indictment of the system that RAMBUS got as
far as they did and their actions cost the memory sector as much as it did.
>"The people who mark
>your written driver's test at the Department of Motor Vehicles
>are not responsible for all the stupid-but-nevertheless-licensed
>drivers on the road - not even the drivers who seemed conspicuously
>deranged, high, or drunk when they passed the test."
mmm - I think this analogy will need a bigger legal department to
succeed....
Nick
(*and for the pedantic I KNOW "nature red in tooth and claw" does not
actually refer to *Darwinian* evolution. Blame Tennyson.)
[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu May 24 17:56:04 2001