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 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]