Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!johnl
From: johnl@ima.ima.isc.com (John R. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Some 1987 patents of interest
Keywords: Patents
Message-ID: <2731@ima.ima.isc.com>
Date: 3 Oct 88 15:04:14 GMT
References: <5511@hoptoad.uucp> <16406@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Reply-To: johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine)
Followup-To: misc.legal
Organization: Not much
Lines: 24

In article <16406@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> casey@cs.ucla.edu (Casey Leedom) writes:
>	Do patents stifle progress?

Yes and no. The theory behind patents is that you have to disclose your
invention, but then you get exclusive rights to it for 17 years. After that,
anybody can use it. This gets inventions disclosed rather than being held
forever as trade secrets, so further work can be built upon them. Patent
protection is much stronger than copyright or trade secret, because nobody can
use your patent without your permission even if he reinvents your thing
completely independently. (Comments in the trade press suggest that a lot of
people in the computer industry who should know better seem to think that
independent reinvention is a defense, which should give rise to some
interesting lawsuits.)

Admittedly, the patent office and the related courts work at a pace better
suited to the technical climate of the 1780s than to the 1980s, so that
in many cases by the time a patent is granted it seems obsolete.  On the
other hand, lots of patents work the way they're supposed to -- the entire
computer industry in the 1950s was built on (and paid license fees under)
the technology in the Eniac patents.
-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, PO Box 349, Cambridge MA 02238-0349, +1 617 492 3869
{ bbn | think | decvax | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something
Rome fell, Babylon fell, Scarsdale will have its turn.  -G. B. Shaw