- From: Tim Mensch <tim01@azby.cx>
- Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 16:44:34 -0700
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
To Whom it May Concern, My name is Tim Mensch, and I am a computer professional. I believe that the standards on the Internet should be kept as free of patent restrictions as is possible. When you have a public resource like the Internet, giving one company a permanent (15 years is effectively forever in Internet time) monopoly on a key technology is an unfair advantage. On the other hand, companies should expect to be rewarded for investing in research. My primary complaint is the extreme duration of a patent: a reasonable alternative would be for the owner of a patent to sign it over to the public domain after a reasonable period of time (1-2 years at most). Then the patent owner would profit from its development investment, and the Internet at large would profit from the new technology. Remember that is the point of a patent: To balance the need to reward an inventor with the benefit to the general public of the idea the patent encompasses. Patent law hasn't caught up to the Internet time scale, and I believe that you should take this into account. Tim Mensch 5926 Taft Ave. Oakland, CA 94618 510-652-7267
Received on Thursday, 4 October 2001 19:40:07 UTC