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- Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!emory!nigel.msen.com!yale.edu!jvnc.net!primerd.prime.com!bungee!jasonp
- From: jasonp@bungee.NoSubdomain.NoDomain (Jason Pascucci)
- Subject: Re: Novell just bought Unix?
- Message-ID: <1992Dec24.203040.18122@primerd.prime.com>
- Sender: jasonp@bungee (Jason Pascucci)
- Organization: Prime Computer R&D
- References: <2B360E6C.369@news.service.uci.edu> <1hbllvINNfj5@uwm.edu> <BzrvK9.7xv@mtholyoke.edu>
- Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 20:30:40 GMT
- Lines: 62
-
- In article <BzrvK9.7xv@mtholyoke.edu>, jbotz@mtholyoke.edu (Jurgen Botz) writes:
- |> In article <1hbllvINNfj5@uwm.edu> jgd@csd4.csd.uwm.edu writes:
- |> >There is an active patent infringement lawsuit against Novell claiming
- |> >that Novell NetWare infringes this client-server patent. According to
- |> >what I've read, the patent's claims are _very_ broad, and some legal
- |> >experts think that if this goes to trial, the patent holder (an
- |> >independent engineer, _not_ another corporate behemouth) may well win.
- |>
- |> a) Does anybody have more info on this?
- |>
- |> b) If this is really as described, maybe it would be A Good Thing if this
- |> independent engineer won such a suit... it could well mean that that
- |> corporate America would start to rethink the value of software patents
- |> if such a thing happened, no?
-
- I don't think so. We can't praise one person for the same thing which
- we condemn whole corporations. Software Patents only do one
- thing, which is cause greed to flourish at the price
- of progress. (No, before you ask, I am not a member of LPF.)
- A broad client-server patent? Stupid! Insane! It's like
- trying to patent 'a device which moves liquid through a pipe'.
-
- What ever happened to a 'fair fight'? If my product/marketing is better
- than yours, then I win. If you have something which has
- the same functionality for less money, than you win,
- other things being equal. Yes, it's sometimes easier to replicate
- a piece of software than to design and implement it, but
- for non-trivial systems, it shouldn't be that much different...
- considering the lead time that the first company would have.
- If some 5 man company, today, wrote an MS windows clone, and undersold
- MS-windows by $50, and it performed better, they deserve to take some
- of MS's market share, and MS deserves to either do something
- different to recapture the market, live with it, or die. I'd much
- rather see 100 different companies going tooth and nail to
- capture a marketplace than 3 big ones. De facto standards should
- be a thing of the past, rational, well thought out standards are
- in vogue, and were a long-time coming.
-
- My point, which I knew I'd get to eventually, is that Patents don't level
- the playing fields, but skew it towards huge corporations who can afford
- to patent out the wazoo, and that have such overhead as to not be able to
- produce a working, reasonable, and improved product in a
- fair length of time so as to insure a good market share.
-
- I realize where you are coming from, though, Jurgen, that maybe
- if the big boys can be bitten by software patents, they might
- also fight for their abolition, but I think it's far more likely
- that they won't, and that the more insane patents will be taken
- to court...after all, I believe (I don't have any figures to
- back it up, but it would be logical) that most software patents are
- owned by corporations. And since 1) it takes money to get a software
- patent, and 2) It takes money to file suit for infringement
- of a patent, that the 'little guy' is still at a major
- disadvantage.
-
- |> Jurgen Botz | Internet: JBotz@mtholyoke.edu
-
- Anyways, enough editorial.
- --
- Jason R. Pascucci
- jasonp@primerd.prime.com
- Disclaimer: The above are opinions, and do not reflect CV Corporate Policy.
-