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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: [OT] Re: Geoworks and their patent
 My guess is the GeoWorks patent won't hold unless someone buys them who can afford to make a case of it. Just a guess... Tyler Baker wrote: > I think that many large corporations (Unisys > excluded) who have an interest in public opinion don't enforce their many patents nearly > as much as some of the smaller companies who are in the "patent business", precisely > because they fear being loathed by developers in the manner that Unisys has become > universally loathed as a lame company by just about everyone I know in the technology > business. It was brought up at Unisys. They laughed. Universal loathing has not eaten as deeply into their pockets as it may have their recruiting. However, they have profits which is more than most web companies can claim precisely because Unisys now operates in a services economy and knows it. Boris and Natasha are paid employees and being loathed is part of being Badenov. Let's look at this another way. Because webTech is still a give away economy, and because the operating systems business is now dominated on one end by an enormously popular commercial product and on the other end by a free one, there is close to zero money in developing core technologies without licensing. The very thing so many from Barlow on down say they want creates the very conditions they loathe. It's comical. Without some way to recoup the costs, services are all that is left, and in services, companies do not develop core technology: they apply it and service its applications. So it is buy or be fed by the kindness of strangers, capitalism or kindness, but choose because those are the choices. > If software patents are to stay around, I feel that they should be limited to no more than > 5 years (instead of 20 or more) and the company that applies for the patent must be > obligated to make an effort at marketing their technology or product. So the solution is to have even more restrictive government interference? Software developers will be subject to special punitive legislation which differentiates them from the MPEG hardware developers? Sweet deal. That will really put innovation under control of the companies that can afford it. > Any ideas? Sure. If a technology is good enough, moneyed companies have to license it or challenge it. If it is bogus, they will challenge it. Remember, they need money and selling hotTech is how the top players get it. The danger is when the moneyed company buys the tech and the patents by buying the patent holder. The LZW patent was reviewed and it held. This was bad news for folks using it and not cricket of Unisys to wait and do it after it was deployed, but that's business timing. It is a legal patent. GIF support is in the web browsers because the moneyed companies paid the license fees. MP3 is in RealPlayer because they paid the license fees. Fair dinkum? The openSoftware folks don't have to challenge bad patents. Let the guys with the bucks pay the lawyers and the licensing fees. OTOH, I guess it is a problem for openSoftware projects that cannot raise the capital to pay for the licenses because they can't develop for it; but they certainly can code to the API. Frankly, I think that patented component licenses are RedHat's problem. Fair dinkum? The secret is to realize just how tied together it all is now and how those knots get tighter daily. Things have changed a lot in the last five years with regards to how much software companies have to negotiate to stay alive. That pattern is repeating at every level of the global community as our interdependencies increase. Wonderful. len *** VOTE Moose and Squirrel For President: a team with a proven record*** xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@i... Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ or CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1 Unsubscribe by posting to majordom@i... the message unsubscribe xml-dev (or) unsubscribe xml-dev your-subscribed-email@your-subscribed-address Please note: New list subscriptions now closed in preparation for transfer to OASIS. 
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