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RE: Utilizing the Web's Whole Information Space, i.e., Mechan

• To: 'sterling' <sstouden@t...>
• Subject: RE: Utilizing the Web's Whole Information Space, i.e., Mechanisms/Patterns of Information Usage and Formation?
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 08:43:19 -0600
• Cc: 'Chiusano Joseph' <chiusano_joseph@b...>, Peter Hunsberger <peter.hunsberger@g...>, "Costello, Roger L." <costello@m...>, XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>

Something like that may happen anyway if the 'first to file' 
proposals go forward.  That is sure to swamp the USPTO with 
patents for everything from integers to objects.

Here's the game:  a VC-financed company takes the Semantic 
Web standards, implements the gateway objects and business 
objects for some subset of an industry (what in SOA RM 
would be the next tier RM), then patents those.   Now the 
Semantic Web standards by inclusion into the government 
standards (say DRM, etc.) become a gun in the backs of the 
upper tier vendors forcing them to walk across a field of 
patent landmines because the standards and recommendations 
are being prepared ahead of market commoditization, not 
behind it.  So any small company fast enough to implement 
even a prototype can patent and hold the big companies for 
ransom.

Because no CEO is foolish enough to do that, they have to 
say no to the standards, create some other description and 
foul the exclusive claims OR buy the smallCo and their patents 
which is what the VCs had in mind from the beginning.

It turns the RF-policy of the W3C into a Judas Goat.  The 
alternative is to create patent keiretsu just as the auto 
industry did.  This works for awhile but have you driven 
a Ford lately?

So early in the meal or late, software patents poison the soup. 
If this doesn't change, the era of open standards is quickly 
coming to an end.  Too risky.

len


From: sterling [mailto:sstouden@t...]
why dont all of us fix them by patenting everything we have and donating 
it to the open system.  It is the only way to survive in this world.
Patents have taken all of the jobs and most of the substance from the 
American People. 
sterling

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