Re: on the topic of IPR

Andrew Newton wrote:

> On Aug 27, 2004, at 8:01 AM, Kevin Peuhkurinen wrote:
>
> > It makes no sense to say "here we have some verifiably homegrown IP 
> > with no encumberances and here we have some encumbered IP.   Let's 
> > use the encumbered IP rather than the unencumbered IP because 
> > otherwise we might get sued by parties unknown".
>
> Is there a connection between "verifiably homegrown" and patent claims?
Only in that by having "verifiably homegrown" technology posted publicly 
on the Internet, it would bolster our (hypothetical) case to get a 
patent claim dismissed.   See below.
> You are correct that the parties are unknown.  If this were an arcane 
> subject area, it is most likely that they would remain unknown and 
> probably non-existent.  However e-mail and electronic messaging and 
> anti-spam are hot areas of intellectual property.  I did take a stroll 
> through the USPTO database and there are numerous, numerous patents in 
> this area.  And these do not include the pending patents that cannot 
> be seen.
> Also, if company XYZ came forward tomorrow and claimed covering IPR, 
> should we ignore them?
I don't think it is valid to decide not to use a particular technology 
just because one day a patent claim may be made against it, at least as 
long as we are confident that there is no existing patents that cover 
it.    As well, I don't think we could rely on IPR holders to 
necessarily sue Microsoft first.   If the Eolas patent gets revoked, 
other IPR holders may decide that going after MSFT is too risky and may 
instead strong arm smaller developers and distributors into paying 
ongoing royalties instead.
In any case, all of this is pure speculation on both of our parts.   
There is no company XYZ.   If they showed up tomorrow and claimed IPR of 
course we couldn't ignore them, but until they do, they are purely 
hypothetical.    What is fact is that we have been offered an IPR 
license which is plainly unacceptable to a large percentage of people 
here.    I don't think you can argue around that by saying that if we 
don't accept it, something worse may come along later.

>