- From: Adam Megacz <adam@megacz.com>
- Date: 30 Sep 2001 15:14:51 -0700
- To: www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org
I'm sure you've recieved many comments so far, so I will attempt brevity and clarity. The patent system works quite well when all participants in a market are operating in the capital economy (producer creates a good, exchanges it for capital). In situations like this, a patent will never prevent a useful good from being produced, since the mechanism for licensing the patent (paying money) can be internalized into the product transaction (charging money). Unfortunately, web software has a large number of participants who do *not* operate in the capital market. This includes academic researchers (government grant command-economy, as well as recognition economies), and open source programmers (cooking pot economy, gift economy). Quite simply, a researcher can't slice off 10% of his recognition and turn it over to the patent holder as a licensing fee. Nor can the open source programmer slice off 10% of the cooking-pot benefits he recieves and remit that as a licensing fee. In short, allowing the RAND policy will restrict the web exclusively to participants in the capital economy. Think carefully: if you had done this five years ago, would we have Apache today? Thank you for your time. - a
Received on Sunday, 30 September 2001 18:16:08 UTC