patent policy comments

  i'm quite concerned about the RAND policy, because "reasonable"
royalties fly in the face of unreasonable patents


  i have my name on a couple of software patents.  if they were
to be found valid, then sun's technique for flattening objects in
java would be found to infringe.  this is obviously not going to
happen

  somewhere in my files i have a copy of the "network standard
byte order" patent.  i've met the guy whose name is on the patent.
his words: "i can't believe they gave it to me."


  i'm concerned that W3C endorsement (let's call it what it is)
of silly software patents will further stifle innovation.  i don't
want to pay even one dollar to someone who got a lawyer and
bamboozled the patent office into giving him ownership of something
that's obvious to someone skilled in the art


  let's face it: there aren't many software patents out there that
are worth anything.  i think that de-facto recognition of them will
only worsen the problem


  thanks for listening,

-landon dyer
 sr. software engineer

Received on Tuesday, 2 October 2001 11:30:32 UTC