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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, April 29 2013 @ 09:44 PM EDT |
Arguing patents used in standards should not be automatically licensed to
everyone for free, in other words worthless, is not at all arguing for 'good
patents'.
A standard is just an agreement between a group of people to make things in a
format so that parts fitting the specified format can be used interchangeably
(I'm sure there is a better definition but this is close enough). There is no
intrinsic free to use in a standard, a standard can be as closed or as open as
the creators want.
Specifically about this case as part of creating the standard Motorola agreed to
negotiate in good faith to determine a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory
price for it's patents in exchange for it's patented technology being part of
the standard. And in the case it chose to ignore this requirement it might in
some way be violating an agreement (I don't know enough to speculate what the
proper, if any, punishments for this might be). In this case however Microsoft
simply chose not to negotiate with Motorola, meaning that Motorola should be in
no way required to license it's patents to Microsoft.
Arguing that this blog dislikes all patents is wrong, this blog dislikes
software patents. Furthermore, much more important that whether or not they
should have awarded the patents, is the concept of consistency. A ruling the
Microsoft doesn't have to pay anything because the patents are patenting
mathematics and therefore invalid would be a win in this blogs eyes, however
that is a win because due to the nature of our legal system it would be applied
consistently against all software patents, not just Motorola's. A win saying
microsoft doesn't have to pay because Motorola contributed to some standard is
totally different, that is saying that to make money companies should simply not
share there technology, and all go off on their own ways, a loss for our entire
society, as well as no win invalidating software patents.
All views in this post are my own and I appoligize if I messed up any facts of
the case, this blogs view, ect, I welcome factual corrections.
-Tusk[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, April 30 2013 @ 03:03 PM EDT |
The problem isn't with the standards.
The problem is that companies
are allowed to get patents on technology that ends up implemented in
standards.
The proper solution is:
Only mature technologies can have
standards implemented on them!
Mature is defined as: technology that is
at least as old as 1 year following the expiration of any patent on that
technology!
Then we can have proper standards which are properly royalty
free.
RAS[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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