From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 08:42:57 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Patents suck
Message-ID: <199602180006.BAA22725@utopia.hacktic.nl>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Jean-Francois Avon (JFA Technologies, QC, Canada) wrote:
> Man's survival tool is his mind.
> 
> Patents and copyright are establishing the ownership and protection
> the result of the exercise of his survival tool.
> 
> Therefore they are good.
> 
> To try to eliminate them is equivalent to promote slavery.

I take some disagreement with that.

With patents, there is a problem of large companies owning them yet
doing nothing with them except suing other companies or individuals.
For example, look at arithmetic coding: there are many patents owned
on it, yet a lot of software using this means of compression may be in
violation of the patents... are the patent-owners publishing software
or makingh efforts to license it widely?  If anything, such patents
are getting in the way of using many algorithms.

Patents would be better if there was a good-faith attempt on the
part of the holder to "use it or lose it".  Somebody sitting on a
patent and doing nothing with it deserves to lose it after a number
of years.