[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: US Patent 6,687,897
At 1:58 PM +1100 2/16/04, Rick Jelliffe wrote: >It feels like Microsoft spitting on ISO and W3C, and the >standards-making community. >What is the point of making general-purpose standards if one rich company or >another can go ahead and monopolize chunks? Don't US citizens see that >(some in) rest of the world see this kind of thing as a pattern of >behaviour, where >the US (indeed, the West) grabs whatever it can get away with, >pompously talking >about freedom or innovation or rights or development, thereby preventing >non-Westerners from having a fair chance? Please don't paint this as a U.S. vs. the world issue. It isn't. There are many, many programmers here in the U.S. who are just as [expletive deleted] off about this as you are. There are also companies and programmers outside the U.S. who play this game as well, though for historical reasons the biggest players are still in the U.S. This would be a non-issue in much of the world were it not for the compliance of local governments.* The real conflict here is between corporations and individuals. (Even that is vastly too simplistic, but it's a first stab at defining the problem.) IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Intergraph, Intel, Fujitsu, etc. can afford to play this game. We poor open source developers can't. If this were really a conflict between countries (as opposed to between classes) then it would be simple enough for Australia, China, etc. to simply not provide any legal patent protection. If that's too radical a notion, then they could easily place more stringent requirements on originality before a patent was granted. The failure to do this should be seen as a failure of the local government, not a failure of the United States. We're responsible for our own broken patent office, and indeed it's hurting us badly. However we are not responsible for Australia's broken patent office, or Japan's, or anyone else's. Non-U.S. patent systems are broken for the same reason the patent system in the U.S. is broken: the broken patent system does server some local interests to the detriment of other local interests. Personally, my interests are served by a much weaker patent system, and I would cheer any country that chose to move in that direction. However, I do recognize that this a conflict of interest between different classes, and the class that is well-served by the current patent system is hardly unique to the United States, any more than the class to which I belong. -- Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo@m... Effective XML (Addison-Wesley, 2003) http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/effectivexml http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0321150406/ref%3Dnosim/cafeaulaitA * I will accept U.S. blame for intellectual property regimens where the U.S. has installed a client government such as Iraq. I don't think China or the U.K. falls into that category. You could claim it for Australia or Japan if you really want to, but it would be a stretch.
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