linux-kernel - Re: Patent or not patent a new idea

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Date:	Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:33:42 -0700 (PDT)
From:	alan <alan@...eserver.org>
To:	Graeme Sheppard <nodes@...lion.net>
cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Patent or not patent a new idea

On Tue, 26 Jun 2007, Graeme Sheppard wrote:

> alan wrote:
>> On Tue, 26 Jun 2007, Graeme Sheppard wrote:
>> 
>>> Dear devs,
>>> 
>>> In a moment of serendipity I thought of a concept which may be 
>>> advantageous
>>> if incorporated into the kernel. I was going to offer it to the OIN but
>>> they responded they only consider existing patents and I don't have the
>>> money to afford one.
>> 
>> How do you know it is a new idea?
>
> The essence of the idea is simple enough that I would have heard of it.
> It isn't an arcane programming trick buried deep in code.

I have heard that applied to cryptography.  In almost every case someone 
has thought of it already and there is a good reason it is not used.

Don't think that it is new and novel until you have done a whole lot of 
research in the field.  There is a reason that the Greeks considered 
Hubris a sin against the Gods...

As for "defensive patents", I think of them as a time bomb waiting to 
happen.

The company that files a defensive patent is rarely the problem, it is 
when they go broke and someone with less ethics buys them up.  The second 
company does not feel bound by those previous agreements and tries to 
squeeze all the money they can out of the purchaced patent pool.

It may seem like a good idea now, but it comes back to haunt the rest of 
us later on down the road.

-- 
"ANSI C says access to the padding fields of a struct is undefined.
ANSI C also says that struct assignment is a memcpy. Therefore struct
assignment in ANSI C is a violation of ANSI C..."
                                   - Alan Cox
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