RE: white hat patents?

["Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>]

Problem is, Dan, that isn't true.  Patent licensing is 
an EXTREMELY lucrative business.  Don't be naive here. 
They don't do this for the pride of holding patents. 

We have to take this very seriously.  We are being 
drawn toward an event horizon of a black hole of singular 
patents that can paralyze the evolution of infrastructure of 
the Internet for decades.  This is very real, very 
bad, and must be propagated to as many lists where 
technical discussions are held quickly.  Sun may 
be asserting what they consider to be a valid patent.
Que bueno.  We know for a fact there is prior art. 
We know the patent covers a vital part of the web 
document design.  This must be overturned and a 
case made clear both to corporations and individuals 
that work for these corporations that pursuing such 
patents will face patient and persistent opposition 
and may cost them considerable business.

It has to stop.  The Patent Office can no longer 
be counted on to be the control.  As the American 
elections just dramatically proved, American institutions 
for regulation and selection often come down to 
political controls.  In such a situation, as the 
Web is an international utility, larger institutions 
must be able to intervene.  As their is no governing 
body and the force of financial resource is governing 
by default, we have no choice but to go to the streets 
and insist that corporations abide by community, not 
commercial, interests.

Len Bullard
Intergraph Public Safety
clbullar@ingr.com
http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard

Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti.
Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h


-----Original Message-----
From: da - dan ancona [mailto:da@vizbang.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 6:19 PM
To: xml-dev@xml.org
Subject: white hat patents?


well, this sun/xlink thing is certainly willie inducing.  it may be a
ways off, but one of the things i'm really excited about is eventually
doing an xLink implementation in vizbang.  i hope this will be ironed
out by the time i get to that point.

an idea that i had for white hat patents, and perhaps something sun
might consider: donate the patent to a standards organization.  that way
they still get a win from it, if only a PR boost.

as for the patent issue itself - i've faced it with my work a couple of
times now.  my conclusion so far has been that a brilliantly amazing,
paradigm destroying, world upending good old fashioned great idea and
US$3.00 will get you - exactly - a double latte and not a thing beyond
that.  execution really is everything.

maybe this is more apparent to people in small underfunded companies, as
opposed to big companies with already established herds of lawyers.  and
i'm not closing myself off to the idea permanently, and it's certainly
been proposed, but i have made the decision to try to steer clear of
that path to the best of my ability.  and i think there are solid
business reasons that should appeal to companies of any size to do the
same.

da