Metaballs - regarding patent 2005-04-15 - By Luc-Eric Rousseau
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In that world, big compagnies with no R&D of their own 'steal' from small
inventors who were just about to make it big, and no rich companies,
professional patent holdings, or universities would prevent smaller companies
from entering a market. Only poor, kind inventors have ideas and patents, and
they pursue only evil rich people! It's a beautiful, imaginary world, where it
is impossible for two field experts in the same era to get the same ideas at
the same time, and ideas are always completely independent of all other ideas,
never an evolution. The residents of that world generally prefer to wait 20
years for another inventor to take a shell of idea and enhanced it into
something that's an actually working implementation and be able to market a
product with it. They hates competition, prefer money going to litigation
rather than research (the world is moving too fast anyway), and prefers having
no products at all if it means some guy in California could run the risk t!
o have a little less cash for snorting cocaine of the backside of a whore. Hey
, it's only fair, he was the first one to file a patent on that thing that other
guy only thought of months later. Anyway, as you know you can use one example
everyone can get behind to make any bad idea sound good. For example, cancer
kills bad cell in your body, therefore cancer is good. I should have patented
this argumentation method when I though about it waaay back in the 90's,
something like "Methods and Apparatus For ..". Wait, that's wasn't broad enough
, let me rephrase that.
> -- --Original Message-- --
> From: Matt Lind
>
> I'd think Intergraph and Digital would beg to differ on your
> views. They
> got raped by Intel and had to give up their computer
> businesses because of
> it. Intel stole patented technology from Intergraph and used
> it in all
> their Pentium chips without Intergraph's knowledge. Intel
> later stole more
> patented technology from Digital's Alpha microprocessor and
> again put it in
> their Pentium chips. If it weren't for those two, Intel's
> Pentiums would
> still be lagging behind everybody else.
>
> The point being that software patents, if anything, don't do
> enough to
> protect the holder of the patent. Intergraph was recently
> awarded the
> largest settlement in US Patent court history when they won
> against Intel,
> but they only received $450 million plus a few extra $100
> million side
> settlements. Between the time Intel stole Intergraph's
> technology and the
> date the judge ruled against them, Intel went from a $2
> billion dollar per
> year company to a $36 billion dollar per year company. If you were
> Intergraph, would you feel you got your money's worth from
> the Patent? I
> doubt it. Their patent award was less than the revenues
> generated by their
> computer business prior to the Intel rape.
>
> In the case of Digital they didn't have the cashflow to
> pursue a lawsuit
> against Intel, so the next best thing they were able to do
> was accept a
> buyout of their semi-conductor plants which was the watershed
> moment that
> sealed their fate.
>
> I think what everybody here doesn't like about patents is the
> concept of
> patenting frivolous ideas or other things that are so common. Like
> copyrights, if something is in the public domain of large
> magnitude prior to
> filing for the patent, then it cannot be patented. Somebody
> may be granted
> a patent, but it's not necessarily enforceable in court.
> Each country only
> recognizes certain patent certificates. A patent held in the
> USA might not
> be enforceable in Africa, for example. The patent holder
> would have to
> re-file for the patent in Africa for it to be enforced there.
---
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