Re: RAND Patents: A great thing

On 30 Sep 2001 22:38:03 -0700, "Alex Simons" <alexsi@microsoft.com> wrote:
>A short note to express my strong support for the RAND patent 
>changes proposed.

Thank you for your note.

>Patents are a critical part of our Intellectual Property system and 
>a key underpinning of our capitalist economy.  Remove patents and 
>you remove the incentives for people to invent/create new IP.

Then exactly what incentives produced the open source community and 
its numerous products and innovations (acknowledged and targeted by 
Microsoft itself as serious competition)?

>Why create new IP when you have to risk it as part of the W3C procedures?

There is no need at all to risk it as part of the W3C procedures. I 
actually see no problem with software patents. If you want to protect 
your IP with patents, that is fine. Just _don't_ try to make it into 
a W3C standard. If you want to protect your IP, the full burden of 
promoting the use of your IP is (must be) on you. That is how 
free-market capitalism _works_.

The recruitment of an open standards organization to take over the 
promotion of commercial patent-protected IP and _impose_ its use on 
users by way of "standardization", on the other hand, smacks of 
unfair competition, eliminates competing commercial and 
non-commercial non-"standards", and is a sabotage of the free-market 
capitalist system.

>Instead, the W3C should uphold, protect and encourage patents as 
>they create and support true innovation by providing tremendous 
>positive economic incentives.

True innovation comes from brilliant minds. They are rarely, if ever, 
motivated by economics.

Sincerely,

- Martijn Dekker, Netherlands

Received on Monday, 1 October 2001 16:15:33 UTC