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The aim: Interoperability - ideally & pragmatically | 282 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Submitting any patent to a standard
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 14 2013 @ 06:04 AM EDT
You do know there's a "rest of the world", don't you? :)

Re: your simplified pooling - what happens if I happen to own half of the
patents in the pool, what's my discount? Do you value some patents more than
others? Some are indeed more essential than others, after all. How much cash
does a patent owner receive from someone who licenses the pool?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

"The only way" ought to lead to invalidation of the patent
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, March 14 2013 @ 07:12 AM EDT
Patents are not supposed to lock up all solutions to a
problem. They are supposed to reward a particularly
innovative specific solution to a problem. At least that was
the original idea.

If sanity prevailed, any patent that cannot be worked around
would be rejected as being overly broad.

Also, under the constitution, congress is only allowed to
grant patents that "promote the progress of science and the
useful arts". Evidence that a particular patent is
hindering progress in an industry ought to be a powerful
argument for its invalidation.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

The aim: Interoperability - ideally & pragmatically
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, March 15 2013 @ 07:39 AM EDT
The Google submission to the:
SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE
Hearing on OVERSIGHT OF THE IMPACT ON COMPETITION OF EXCLUSION ORDERS TO ENFORCE STANDARD-ESSENTIAL PATENTS
Beginning page 14 of aai- IP and Standards, FINAL test. 7-9-12
I.THE DELICATE BALANCE OF STANDARD SETTING

As the FTC has recognized, “[i]nteroperability standards can create enormous value for consumers by increasing competition, innovation, product quality and choice.”1

They go on to examine what actually happened in Europe vs US claiming this was directly due to early adoption of 'Open Standards'
ETSI’s decision to adopt the unified GSM standard in 1989 was responsible for the rapid growth of the digital mobile network in Europe. The percentage of mobile phone users using the digital network in Europe rose from 4% in 1992 to over 90% in 1998.4 By contrast, over the same period the United States did not adopt a unified standard, and the growth of digital mobile phone use suffered as a result: digital mobile phones began to be used only in 1995, and in 1998 the percentage of mobile phone subscribers using digital cellular phones was still below 30%.
Moving on with the history of this development, they go on to give good descriptions of what has actually happened while acknowledging theoretical dangers in the system. So far these fears have not materialised when the pragmatic success of the system has been dependent on the players being active participants, with a need to maintain good reputations for playing fair, etc.. Google go on to argue:
It is no accident that the firms that are petitioning the government to alter that successful status quo were not significant participants in the development of the standards in question. To the contrary, both Apple and Microsoft are dominant providers of proprietary operating systems who have invested little time and money in contributing cellular standard essential patents.13 Their clear incentive is to minimize the amount of money they pay to those who have invested billions in building open telecommunication protocols while maximizing the amount they can charge users of their own proprietary operating systems. These efforts, like prior rejected efforts to change ETSI’s IPR policy to disfavor innovative SEP holders, threaten innovation and the ability of SSOs to incorporate robust technologies.
It is then that they present their arguments on "de facto standards" presenting similar dangers to the ones being argued by the people now challenging the way that Standards bodies have evolved etc.. Well worth a read if you haven't yet had the chance.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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