[107448] in Cypherpunks
Re: Babbage's Revenge; Patenting any algorithm reducible to software practice
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Fred Hapgood)
Thu Jan 14 11:51:45 1999
From: hapgood@pobox.com (Fred Hapgood)
To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Cc: dcsb@ai.mit.edu, Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>,
e$@vmeng.com, cryptography@c2.net, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Date: Thu, 14 Jan 1999 16:39:24 GMT
In-Reply-To: <v04020a49b2c2c137deee@[139.167.130.248]>
Reply-To: hapgood@pobox.com (Fred Hapgood)
>
>
>At the DCSB meeting last week, we found out that this ability, to take
>*any* algorithm, including a business process, to reduce it to practice in
>a computer, and then to claim patent on it, has been inherent in patent law
>all along, but that it took the actual emergence of computer technology
>itself to make it manifest. Call it Babbage's revenge. Or maybe Russell's.
My message didn't have anything to do the conceptual logic of
business model patents. Or at least it was clearly in my mind
to avoid that briar patch when I write the post. I was
concentrating on enforcement, pure and simple. So let me
try again:
>> Is it as obvious to everyone else as it is to me that business model
>> patents, especially models involving the internet, are absurd from an
>> enforcement perspective?
Imagine you are a regulator/politician/citizen of some other
country, like for instance France. Imagine a French citizen
starts a business selling French bread online. That business
is then sued in a French court by an American company, not because
the French company is infringing on a bread patent, or a trade
name copyright, but because the American company has a patent
on selling foods online. It has nothing to do with bread.
It could care less about bread.
Now when I put myself in the place of the above r/p/c I find
the above scenario leaves me engorged with rage. I would see
a predatory American legalistic culture out to crush companies
that are not in any sense that I can understand even competitive
with it. I would see such suits as being entirely about bullying,
pure and simple. (Indeed, I feel this way even without being
French. Imagine if I had that advantage.)
Now suppose there is one country with a reasonable infrastructure
out there that finds ways to inhibit business model patent
infringement suits. Just one is all you need, right? Some
businesses will start up in that country, infringing like crazy.
That in and of itself will place license payments in the
other countries under great pressure even if there is no
change in the underlying concepts. And of course that might
happen too -- certainly the people looking for a fundamental change
in the whole system grow every day.
Myself, I'm in favor of boosting the patent application fee to a million
bucks. If you can't pay that, you can't pay to enforce your patent
anyway, so why bother?
Fred
