[107390] in Cypherpunks
Re: Patent Fraud
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ryan Lackey)
Wed Jan 13 09:27:20 1999
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 10:07:12 -0400
From: Ryan Lackey <ryan@systemics.ai>
To: dbs@philodox.com, cypherpunks@algebra.com
In-Reply-To: <199901131315.JAA04436@systemics.com>; from Ian Grigg on Wed, Jan 13, 1999 at 09:15:08AM -0400
Reply-To: Ryan Lackey <ryan@systemics.ai>
Quoting Ian Grigg (iang@systemics.com):
> Dan said,
> > I think I'll go patent a variety of frauds so I can get myself
> > added as an injured party to all the lawsuits of the next
> > century.
>
> ;)
>
> I'd like to submit the following fraudulent patent:
> [Ian's evil meta-patent on stupid patents]
Wasn't it on DBS a few months ago where an argument came up about the
utility of lawyers in the post-DBS world? I argued (I think) that lawyers
would be just as useful with DBS and without national regulation being
the dominant force in life. I guess there are two potential roads here,
both of which have lawyers as useful, but I definitely prefer one over the
other:
1) Belgian/EU/USA/UN patent, regulatory, etc. restrictions become global
2) Regulatory arbitrage. If enough stupid patents are passed, the the guns
of the big states get used to defend them, then all commerce should move
out of the reach of the patents. If a small country like South Africa
where large classes of stupid patents didn't apply were to be set up for
DBS/finance/software/etc. business, or at least the legal/financial aspects
of those businesses, with the rest being distributed through cipherspace,
the current patent insanity would hurt no one but the governments (in forgone
taxes).
I still think lawyers will be quite useful in the latter case; South Africa
certainly still has laws, and you would need lawyers to ensure that your
contracts are enforceable, etc. Just as you would need accountants even if
there were no taxes -- one's shareholders would want annual reports,
internal fraud would need to be detected, etc.
(My position on patents is that I'm willing to defend myself in patent
warfare, but if you really care about something being protected, you should
protect it as a trade secret instead, using remote execution or
tamper-resistant modules to implement it. This would work quite well for
portfolio managers -- *why* do they need to distribute this algorithm
widely? Standard NDAs should protect it from insiders with need to know.
Patent lawyers, however, would hopefully be looking for a new line of work.
