[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] RE: white hat patents?
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@i... http://www.mp3.com/LenBullard Ekam sat.h, Vipraah bahudhaa vadanti. Daamyata. Datta. Dayadhvam.h -----Original Message----- From: da - dan ancona [mailto:da@v...] Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2001 6:19 PM To: xml-dev@x... 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
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