Re: computerimplemetierte Erfindung vs. Software

["Axel H Horns" <axel.h.horns@gmx.net>]

On 20 Sep 2004, at 15:49, Rigo Wenning wrote:

> Am Monday 20 September 2004 15:18 verlautbarte Florian Weimer :
> > Dazu muß das Patent rechtzeitig bekannt werden und nicht erst in den
> > letzten fünf Jahren seiner Lebenszeit durchgesetzt werden. Die
> 
> Das ist eines der wirklich dicken Probleme. Wäre das Patent bekannt,
> würde sich die Technik nicht durchsetzen. Also warten die Verwerter
> bis es sich durchgesetzt hat und genug Investitionen getätigt sind und
> halten dann die Hand auf. 

Gegenvorschlaege sind moeglich, z.B.

"In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, or 
more simply, lock-in, is a situation in which a customer is dependent 
on a vendor for products and services and cannot move to another 
vendor without substantial costs, real and/or perceived. By the 
creation of these costs to the customer, lock-in favours the company 
(vendor) at the expense of the consumer. Lock in costs create a 
barrier to entry in a market. The concept of vendor lock-in is often 
used in the computer industry to describe the effects of a lack of 
compatibility between different systems. Lock-in effects may harm 
competition in huge market segments. RF or at least RAND licensed 
open standards may be seen as a solution to limit vendor lock-in 
effects. In some sense, popular F/OSS solutions like the Linux 
operating system may represent some kind of open standard by 
themselves. In a time where most computers are interconnected by some 
kind of network, interoperability is a key issue. Hence, open 
standards are most important. However, it is difficult to create RF 
or RAND licensed open standards if it is not known whether or not 
there is any third party holding at least one patent, the protected 
technology of which being necessary to implement the standard. 
Perhaps it will be necessary to think on other tracks than 
traditionally done. One might, for example, imagine the patent law to 
be amended by introducing a rule allowing major standardising 
institutions like DIN, ISO or W3C to publish a full technical 
disclosure for a proposed interoperability standard in some kind of 
an Official Gazette issued by some competent Authority on EU level. 
Then, each and every patent holder has an opportunity to oppose 
against this proposal within a certain term of, say, nine months or 
so. If a patent holder opposes, the standardising organisation as 
well as the public will be notified accordingly. An opposition can be 
absolute (i.e. the patent holder refuses to license the patent at 
all) or relative (i.e. the patent holder is willing to provide a RAND 
license only). If a patent holder does not oppose in due time the 
grant of a RF license will be stipulated by law. Such procedure would 
not unduly harm the interests of patent holders (they merely have to 
closely watch the Official Gazette and make up their mind) because of 
they will not be forced to grant any license. On the other side, if 
no opposition has been filed, the standards bodies can be sure that 
the proposed standard is in fact patent free. If oppositions are 
raised, they can re-think on whether or not drop that proposal. 
However, as in many other cases, the problems are in the gory 
details. For example, it will not be easy to deal with unexamined or 
even unpublished patent applications. Furthermore, the proposed 
procedure might not scale very well. If thousands or even tens of 
thousands of proposals would be published per year, the burden for 
the patent owners would be clearly inacceptable. On the other hand, 
patent owners must be hindered to simply block any standard without 
even looking at the details by simply filing objections on the basis 
of each and every patent available in their patent portfolio. If the 
total number of published proposals per year is sufficiently low this 
might be achieved by requiring a modest Official fee or by imposing a 
duty to substantiate the Opposition."

> Man müsste beim Patentrecht einen ähnlichen Verfall haben, wie im
> Markenrecht. Wer seine Marke nicht benutzt und verteidigt, der hat sie
> verwirkt. Damit wäre dieses Verhalten erschwert.

Ouch, also das mit dem "Verteigigen" halte ich fuer ein einigermassen 
zweischneidiges Schwert. Will man z.B. IBM und MS wirklich zwingen, 
alle Welt wegen Patentverletzung zu verklagen, bei Strafe der 
Verwirkung und des Verfalls des eigenen Patentportfolios?   

Gruss,

Axel

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