Nation-states enter contentious patent-buying business
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 20th Mar 2013 23:43 UTC
Legal Countries are starting to get into the patent business; countries like France and South Korea are setting up patent entities to protect domestic companies. "Intellectual Discovery presents itself as a defensive alliance: if a South Korean company finds itself targeted in a lawsuit, for instance, it can access the patents being compiled by Intellectual Discovery to hit back." I support this. If, say, a small Dutch company were to come under unfair patent aggression by bullies like Apple and Microsoft (quite likely these days), I damn well expect my government to protect them from it. If you can't fix the system, work with it. As simple as that.
E-mail Print r 1   35 Comment(s) http://osne.ws/kqj
Permalink for comment 556014
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE: Comment by kwan_e
by Laurence on Thu 21st Mar 2013 09:01 UTC in reply to "Comment by kwan_e"
Laurence
Member since:
2007-03-26

That would work for the original intention of patents where processes). But these days much of the stuff that is patented are ideas, designs or even just maths. It's a lot harder to have those things kept closed and thus you're practically encouraging companies to continue to patent as they are. In fact, you're practically giving them a free pass to sue other companies (ie "X designed a swipe to unlock, Y saw that idea and now we want our research time refunded").

I do like your idea a lot though. And in an ideal world, designs and ideas would be covered by copyright alone, and maths couldn't be intellectual property. So your method would work.

There's certainly not a lot right in the current set up and having governments set up patent pools like that only emphasis the issues rather than help address them.

PS the nerd in me loves your nested footnotes. ;)

Reply Parent Score: 5