[8460] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Multimedia has been patented
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dick St.Peters)
Fri Nov 19 18:52:21 1993
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 93 18:43:51 EST
From: stpeters@spare-parts.crd.ge.com (Dick St.Peters)
To: com-priv@psi.com, bzs@world.std.com
Reply-To: <stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com>
> This is government (almost) at its worst, irresponsibly assigning (and
> intending to enforce) broad and destructive monopolies.
It's worth noting that the government does not enforce patents. It
is up to the patent holder to take cases to court, where both the
case and the patent itself are subject to scrutiny. A patent holder
who does this therefore risks having the patent declared invalid, so
most patent "enforcement" is based on a judgement that it's cheaper
to pay up than fight. This tends to keep the fees small.
If I remember right, a patent can be challenged repeatedly, but a
single loss in court is final, except for appeals of that case.
The patent office tend to view its role as that of a high-pass
filter for the courts. The granting of a patent is not so much an
endorsement as a statement that the applicant was persistent and the
PO couldn't find a definitive reason not to grant the patent.
Another way of looking at this is that if they think they will be sued
for issuance of a patent if they don't grant one, they grant it to keep
the government out of court and let industry fight it out.
I'd like to see industry fight this one rather than cave in, but the
usual tactic is to sue one company at a time. Other companies are
often all too happy to have a competitor burdened with the cost and
distraction of the lawsuit while they go after its business.
--
Dick St.Peters
GE Corporate R&D, Schenectady, NY stpeters@dawn.crd.ge.com
