rough notes from

Eduardo Gutentag

Extreme IPR

No definition of "Reasonable" so we end up in WWACS = What Would a Court Say?

Silly patents - the gerbil shirt. 6,960,975 for the warp drive.

patents on style sheets, on schemas. Busiones methods = concatenation of two obvious things can be a business method. System encourages the maximum number of filings (funded by filing fees). Prior art should be cited and investigated, but in practice ....

Whatever happens in the US affects the rest of the world, by influence and by imitation. So the worldshould care about the US Patent system.

US Constitution protects the right of the inventor for a limited time. In practice the main beneficiaries are often unrelated to the inventor and the time is not very limited. "Clearly deformed from its originalmeaning".

Who does the patent system protect? Value to society,economic value. (examples of adverts that cite the numberofpatents they hold). Is there a value to society? Yes and No. Main argument in favour is that it encourages inventors, although no study has shown this. The folk who say not assert that it stifles competition (and again,no strudy shows this).

"Incredible tension between patents and standards". Standards encourage multiple interoperable implementations.Patents favour a small number of economically bound implementations.

"The interface patents should be prohibited".

"The road ahead is booby trapped"

Trap 1: Standards protection.
The illusion of standards protection. Need to decide between essentialand non essential claims. However the "distinction can be gamed". Submarine patents (which are illegal) but can weaselout by saying something is not essential.

Trap2:Open source protection
most Open Source licenses say nothing about patent infringement. Entrapment by submarine patent is clearly possible. Only a few cases of this, could be very painful.

"I have no solution". "If you can't beat them, join them". Suggestion is to go forth and multiply. If you have the money. Or get a foundation going. but get lots of patents.

But only under two conditions. Firstly disclose the application, at the earliestopportunity (this is exactly contrary to current practice). Secondly,protect us all. Covenant the patent irrevokably (thatis important) to never be enforced whether essential or not. As long as the other person does not enforce theirs either. So its a reciprocal commitment that protexts you, and others.

"It is perhaps the only way. The system is sick".