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[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: hi
 You asked. My opinion: <soapbox> I don't think it is good business if it is done knowingly. It isn't honest and it isn't fair. My ethics may sound like the Mickey Mouse Club, and Bob Keeshan redux but it is the best I know. "We work hard and we play fair and we're in harmony; M.. I.. C.. K.. E.. Y M.O.U.S.E" and wow I miss Annette, Captain Kangaroo, and Mr. Moose. Unfortunately, it isn't illegal and that is all that will stop some businessmen. Any kind of finagling done to get something like that is, in my opinion, unethical. When such unethical practices become part of a company culture, it tars that culture. When it becomes a permanent feature of the business culture at large, it turns that culture medieval, complete with warlords, serfs, and rule by force and devastation. One knows them by their acts. Mongol General: We have won again. That is good! But what is best in life? Mongol Warrior: The open steppe, fleet horse, falcon on your wrist, wind in your hair! Mongol General: Wrong! Conan, what is best in life? Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women! Mongol General: That is good. - Conan The Barbarian - It is stupid. We can play hard and still make a profit. I mean, dammit, how much stuff does one need? Software patents are a relatively new phenomenon and we haven't learned as a culture, as I've said before, that feeding the wolf keeps him coming back to our door. The patent wars are a very dangerous destructive engagement, and too many of us are fighting on that front these days. The only winners are the lawyers and the document management systems vendors. Our industry at large is losing and in my opinion, it would only take some pushing from some prominent CEOs to stop this, particularly if the wise ones will work with the legislative bodies and our respective patent organizations to forge a sensible and mutually acceptable new form and process for realizing returns from intellectual property. We don't have to keep being stupid. The problem is the gray area where someone is uncertain that the application is unfair or that prior art exists and they haven't looked hard enough, or the original is in terminology or forms that aren't easy to recognize, or in a place that the searcher can't reach. I noted recently that a Microsoft engineer was working with a system that verb-drives the interface. He was asking on open lists for any prior art. Technical writers recognize this as similar to standard ways to structure task procedures, and some of that made its way into IETM work, guidelines from authors such as William Horton, and so on. Now finding the references to back it up, ensuring that respondents are really talking about the same thing, and so on can take time. A dilligent person takes the time and makes the effort. They might conclude after some time that they have done the right thing, file the patent, get the patent, and then find out about the prior art. That's the honest case that goes bad. Now the honest businessman with stockholders has a tricky decision to make. Does he/she abandon the patent or trademark, or take advantage of having the upperhand? Then there is the obviousness test and it is much trickier. If it looks really obvious, it probably is and it is probably common practice. One agent makes that decision but another decides to go for it. Then we get the Mike Doyles of the world who are now in a position to do serious damage to the information ecosystem claiming all the while to be protecting it from some alledged bigger evil, in his case, Microsoft. So the hatred the is epidemic just created another monster of what might be otherwise, a good guy. If we choose to make of our culture, a swamp of mindless invective, DNS attacks, whatever, then we fear the reaper and that is how it becomes more powerful. Hate makes hate; the only cure is love. If one can't believe in that, then show me an alternative. Say you don't believe in God; Ok. I'll accept that. Say you don't believe in yourself, I can only weep for you. I don't mind being poor; I mind being wrong. It's a hard problem today, but I don't think it has to remain that. As I said, the men and ladies who run the major software companies should meet and forge an agreement to work with the governments of our countries to create a new IP regime that both incentivizes invention, protects the rights of the inventors, but does not rob the world and our children's children of the hard won products of our intellects. But I ask you this: what is the limited period, will we accept technical means (eg, DRM) to protect it, and will WE as a culture and as individuals work just as hard to protect the creator's rights? This is and will always be an ecosystem of mutual interests. We can choose to be symbiotes or parasites. That is how we differ from out automatons; we are aware of the rules, and we can change them. Justice, as always, is an individual choice of who chooses our choices, and the choices we make. That is what the humans can do that the machines can't. </soapbox> len From: Frank [mailto:frank@t...] On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 14:34, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote: > I've got > no problem with bare-knuckled competition; that's business. > This isn't that; this is crap. > Len this is an honest question, trying to figure out where you're coming from. 1.Is knowingly filing a patent application for which there is prior art 'business'? 2. if not, how about jiggering company procedures so that the question "is this original?" is never asked of anyone who might know that the correct answer is 'No."? 
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