On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 3:03 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
If we are smart enough to make an economy worthy of our technological > genius, then every person on earth will be fabulously wealthy by present > day standards. Every person will be free to do anything he or she pleases, > every day of her life, the way a multimillionaire is today, or the way > Thomas Jefferson was. This should be the birthright of any person born on > the Earth or anywhere else in the solar system. Every baby should be > welcomed with all food, water, education, Internet access and > transportation he or she wants, for a lifetime, just for showing up. > I agree very strongly with this description. My own personal issue (and you may not be addressing comments that I have made in the past) lies not in rewarding innovation. It lies in overcompensation and the setting up of a system of extracting rents. An outcome I see very likely is this: one or more patents will stick and be enforced at some point, and manufacturers in poor countries will find it harder to build on top of LENR technology without paying the license fees, either raising the cost of their products for people who can ill afford to pay the additional price or denying an international market for their products. You see a similar dynamic with genetically modified seed. Such an arrangement, if allowed to form with LENR, would be a tragedy in my opinion. For this reason I will not lose a second of sleep if any and all patents relating to the fundamental LENR processes can be systematically undermined; indeed, it is a cherished hope of mine that this can be brought about. I see the USPTO's refusal to consider LENR patents as a windfall. I am not against hardworking, innovative (and sometimes paranoid) people being rewarded handsomely for their efforts. I'm against trillions going to some while others who can barely afford a meal must pay more for electricity as a result of patent enforcement, even if the license fees are amortized over a large population. Eric
