UN Wades Into Patent War Mess

Rambo Tribble writes "The BBC is reporting that the worldwide, tangled mess of IP litigation has come to the attention of the UN's International Telecommunication Union. The agency has announced it will be holding talks aimed at reducing this massive drag on the digital economy. Good luck."

Comments

Thank goodness!

[93 Escort Wagon]

If there's one organization I think of when it comes to taking effective, decisive, timely action - it is the United Nations.

Re:Thank goodness!

[Anonymous Coward]

Democracy is the worst possible way to govern, except for all the alternatives.

Re:Thank goodness!

[solidraven]

Of all the UN-related organisations out there ITU is one of the few that actually takes decisive action on a regular basis. Might take a while until we see results, but ITU won't back down for Apple or Microsoft.

Re:Thank goodness!

[SuricouRaven]

It's easier to just call it a defensive action, or peacekeeping, or anti-terrorist campaign. The word 'war' has such a bad image.

Re:Thank goodness!

[gbjbaanb]

unfortunately it looks like it already has - the investigation is into the use of 'essential' patents (ie boring stuff like GSM and JPEG patents) and not the use of crap like slide-to-unlock or the shape of a rectangle.

In other words, Motorola, who invented useful things, is to be investigated for not letting Microsoft and Apple have them for free, whereas Apple, who had a vague idea on rubbing your finger on a screen in a left-right way, isn't to be investigated at all.

A semi-informed rant

[Ducon Lajoie]

I think this may actually not be a waste of time. A lot of the mess we see now is due to the inclusion of patented technology in international standards (be they ITU, ETSI, ISO-IEC, ANSI whatever). And the fact that there was so little oversight on this, the validity of patent claims and subsequent licensing, was due to the direct wishes of the telecom/technology companies themselves. The standard bodies were all to happy to accommodate their constituents in this point for years.

Now the companies, and the government who are in the awkward position of depriving their citizens of the latest cell phone because of some obscure patent law issue, are realizing that they are in the process of hanging themselves with the rope they had requested.

This is a very broad issue and the ITU has had a decent track record of elevating previously obscure tech issues into the international policy realm. If anyone expects overnight binding measures to come from this, they are deluded. But raising awareness of the issue and getting the various actors to take a position is the unavoidable first step in resolving any complex issue.

Good luck to them.

Re:UN vs The massed Phalanxes of Lawyers worldwide

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to see the UN troops with their blue hats march into the courtroom and tell the lawyers of both sides to back off.

And a nice little red cross tent outside taking care of the wounded lawyers who burned themselves choking on their coffee.

cue anti-UN paranoia commentaries in 3... 2... 1..

[Tom]

For some people, the UN could announce a cure for cancer, free unlimited food for everyone, a low-cost solution to global warming and a Mars colony project on the same date, and they would comment with NWO paranoia, evil overlord nonsense and "don't mess with my rights" bullshit.

A huge majority of those comments come from americans. Are you so unconfident that you can't accept someone else besides the "land of the free and the home of the brave" (which has long since turned into a joke to everyone outside the US) as someone setting international agendas?

We have a similar phenomenon over here in Europe, btw. - it is directed against the European Union, which is always blamed for everything that goes wrong, even though at least lately they have made a ton of excellent decisions (rejecting ACTA being the most prominent one). That is in part caused by our coward, corrupt, evil politicians, who abuse the EU to push through laws they want but know would never get popular support for. It goes roughly like that: Come up with law, test it with a few controlled "leaks", notice popular outrage. Publicly call the scapegoat you prepared for a crazy idea and ascertain public that the party line is different. Quietly move law to the EU level and get it passed as an EU directive. A year or two later, dig up old law again and complain how you really don't want to do it, but the EU forces you to...

So I wonder where the anti-UN sentiment in the US comes from?

ITU will soon find this isn't its bailiwick

[Shag]

Other acronyms are going to quickly get dragged into this, mainly the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which is much more about this sort of stuff, and possibly the World Trade Organization (WTO) if, for example, Korea were to complain that the US ITC is being overly kind to Apple and should be letting Korean products in.