This idea below of a "patent pool" is similar to the bearer cryptography patent trust idea I was kicking around with a couple of investment bankers here in Boston a few years ago... It seems that these guys were sitting on a public shell, and were noticing that both Millicent and DigiCash were both up for sale at the time, and were trying, like every one does, :-), to figure how to make money with them. I suggested that, while the code for Millicent at least might be valuable, that the patents were the most valuable thing about *either* of those businesses. I talked to these gentlemen about the model I had for internet bearer underwriting and how it could pay royalties right off the top to certain global holders of patents like blind signatures, allowing their use even for open source software, and that it might be possible to create something like a publicly held trust to hold those kinds of patents. Just like if someone like when Warren Buffet buys a company, the patent holders would get a liquid publicly traded asset, and the trust would collect royalties as revenues of the corporation, and the stock would go up accordingly. :-). Don't know if it would work, though, and not just for purely financial reasons, either. It seems to me at the outset that unless Chaum has a way to completely kill the usefulness of the blind signature patent and replace it with something better -- and to withstand the inevitable charge from Ecash Technologies that he knew about it at the time of the DigiCash liquidation, which would be a pretty serious legal cat-fight whether the charge were true or not -- that Ecash Technologies has enough funding from Deutchebank and others to make it a long time before the original Chaumian patent portfolio will be on the market again, if ever. The patents expire, speaking of such things, in 2007, after all. Cheers, RAH --- begin forwarded text Date: Sat, 23 Sep 2000 22:29:24 +0100 From: Somebody To: "R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Chaumian cash redux "R. A. Hettinga" wrote: > > --- begin forwarded text > > Date: 23 Sep 2000 05:37:39 -0000 > From: Anonymous <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: Chaumian cash redux > > Bob forwards: > > At the EFF end-of-RSA ball in SF last night David Chaum stood up and > > said a few enigmatic words: "Great to be here, and what's really > > important now is that we all come together and have a common approach. > > I've looked at the old ecash and, (wry smile) there were a few > > problems. But I've got some ideas about how to fix it and make it > > available in a way which avoids the kind of wars we've had in the past. > > I had wanted to make more of an announcement tonight, but the legal > > stuff is (as always) taking longer than I'd anticipated. So, thank > > you." [applause] > > Pretty interesting. I wonder if he has an interesting new patent > unencumbered way to do ecash, and if he's going to make it patent > free. Between you and me, I heard he was talking about something called a "Patent Pool", which makes me think, strangely, that patent-free ain't what we're going to get. I dunno whether this was part of the public speech, though, which is why I'm not posting publicly. Cheers, <Somebody's .sig> --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
