(And do email me, if you would--I admit that I've not put as much work into the project recently as I've meant, but it would be great to be able to talk with a patent attorney about a number of issues involved.)
"In patent-land, I could do the same with my invention, put it in the public domain and let others use it freely, as long as they conform to some license agreement such as the GPL."
Company X states that patents A, B,... will be licensed at no-cost to anyone whose code using
those patents is covered by any of the free/open-source licenses FooL, BarL,...
That's basically part of what I'm trying to do (with Option and Pool "F") in the Open Patent License under development at www.openpatents.org/.
Does this existing LVM allow you dynamically resize the logical volumes and/or the JFS's which reside upon those logical volumes while the system is up and running and users are accessing file and data thereupon, without needing to reboot the system?
Dynamic resizing of fileystems has nothing to do with the LVM implementation. I've never heard of an LVM system that wouldn't let you dynamically resize the lvols, and whether you can dynamically resize the filesystems that live in these same lvols is dependent on the filesystem itself, not LVM. Your first comparison is true of both Heinz Mauelshagen's LVM and IBM's LVM, and your second has nothing to do with LVM, except perhaps for lvm command hooks to be able to automatically type the fs-resize commands for you.
(There are other plusses and minuses between the two, of course. IBM's lvm can do mirroring and raid at the lvol level instead, whereas the existing lvm requires you to raid the underlying physical volumes instead. But, you can put data in the existing LVM's lvols without worrying about destroying anything by writing over LVM datastructures as you would with IBM's, since IBM stores system data in the beginning of each lvol--In the current system you can safely make an lvol writable by a user, for instance.)
I've developed a piece of software that implements a patented protocol, and am in discussion currently with the patent holder on a patent license for open software (i.e., they can extort all the money they want from companies that want to embed the technology, but not from anyone delivering source with their products).
Please contact me.
I'm not a lawyer or anything, but I'm trying to push for something similar with what's currently labelled "Option F" of the Open Patent License at www.openpatents.org, and in order to help the license become more useful when it is debugged in detail by lawyers, I would like to:
Understand the concerns of possible participants.
Encourage open discussion of the topic on the mailing list, so the license can better include needed features and better address possible concerns, assuming the participants would consider public discussion at this point.
List the company as being interested in licensing their patents that way, once the license is in a workable state, again assuming they don't mind such publicity, as a way of helping to persuade other possible future licensors to either do the same, or to at least offer other suggestions to improve the license.
Consider, if he additionally licensed the BSD people (but only them) to use the algorithms freely, could they still use them, knowing that the software would not be modifiable by others?
That's the sort of thing I want what's currently called "Option F" of the Open Patent License at www.openpatents.org to be able to do, except that I would want it to include all Open Source licenses, given conditions of the sort you imply--that is, that that copy of the work remains distributable under an Open Source license, as well as additionally requiring that all other incorporated patents are at least distributable under that same Open Source license.
(And as you can see at the www.openpatents.org site, Raph does seem to be open to considering something like the OPL once it's stable.)
However, I wouldn't mind seeing a coherent implementation of Mutual Defense Against Software Patents. Fight copyright with copyleft. Fight patents with mutual defense.
A lot has been talked about the Free Software patent pool. Software algorithms/methods will be patented and will be allowed to use only in free software. The idea is to give free software a competitive advantage over propietery software.
What do you think?
That's sort of what I'm wanting the Open Patent License, under development at www.openpatents.org to do, except that I'd like the OPL to address the problems (software) patents present for proprietary works too. (The problem affects more than just free software--there's no reason to limit a solution to just one group.)
What if I have an Open Patent? Can I sell that too?
What should happen, or rather what I would like to be able to happen, is that if you've licensed one of your patents under Open Patent License, (still in development at www.openpatents.org), but someone else's use of the patent would not comply with the OPL given the Option you chose, then they should still be able to go to you to try to purchase some sort of other license for your patent.
(I have thought about at some point letting patent-holders who've submitted their patents under one of the Options of the Open Patent License to sell non-Open Patent licenses through the site as well, where those sales would incur a small commision, all as a way of making the site self-funding in the long term. But all that's a ways off still--the first priority is to do the main Open Patents work first. However, I wasn't planning on listing non-Open Patents with that service, since I think that would be counter to the main goals of the site and organization.)
I guess the only way to prevent that kind of thing in the near future is for small companies (even larger) to join their patents so they can have a big enough patent pool to be protected against those attacks.
If the entire industry agrees to a reduced duration for sotfware patents, then shouldn't the patent office allow this? It would certainly seem that the patent office and the lawyers have allowed this to take a life of its own, forgetting the original purpose.
This arrogrance is very disheartening.
Don't be disheartened. All is not quite lost.
Even if we can't (yet) convince the patent office and legislatures about the harm of (software) patents, businesses who would rather bypass the whole mess but need to have their own patents for defensive reasons can still cross-license their patents among themselves.
It's not as effective a solution as international patent law reform, but at least it can be a partial solution for Open Source writers as well as give those who have defensive patents an even greater defense against any who use patents offensively, and it doesn't require an act of congress to implement.
If you have any suggestions as to how to better go about this, or suggestions on improvements to the license, please let me know, or join the mailing list.
Sorry, I was a bit more confrontational in my wording that I should have been.
Here are my thoughts:
I would hope that getting an actual patent and using the Open Patent License would give the inventor as much protection against duplicate patents as an SIR would, (once everything's all finished and the license is in a usable state.)
If (1) is the case, and obtaining a patent is in the same range of cost as obtaining an SIR, then I would think (1) woiuld be the way to go.
If both obtaining a normal patent or a statutory patent is too expensive, then theoretically simply publishing the idea should be enough. However, you point out that it's not the case in reality, and we certainly have seen evidence of that! I wonder, however, how much effect submitting that same idea to the Software Patent Institute's database would have. (USPTO officially supports the SPI's database, I think. I was under the impression that they actually did searches there--although even in that case I'm not to optimistic that they'd even find a prior art for a bubble sort if the "inventor" didn't use the word "bubble" in describing the algorithm.
The fact that I'm pushing the Open Patent License means I'm sort of biased in thinking "Open Patent" should refer to something more than a patent equivalent of public domain, hence the immediate "No, no, no", and instant "Why would you want to do that" confrontational response. Next time I'll wait a few more minutes and edit the post again before submitting it.
It is a patent which servers/only/ to relinquish all rights to the public domain, and to prevent others from claiming a similar patent.
Presumably, it merely prevents others from getting a patent on the exact same thing. However, they can still make a slight modification and get a patent on that, and given that the USPTO has issued multiple patents on the same things in the past anyway, I don't see how an SIR from a practical point of view would guarentee that couldn't still get a patent on this same "invention" covered by the SIR.
That's good news. I suggest all programmers and companies (in the software industry) start using these "ethical" patents.
Why? It simply costs a lot of money and doesn't theoretically gain you anything over the cheaper but just as ethical method of simply publishing the idea. But if you're wanting to spend thousands of dollars anyway and act ethically while you're at it, and get some defensive benefits as well as the possibility of getting access to patents that are blocking your software development, why not go the full route to get a real patent, to license it under the Open Patent License, (once finalized)?
(That is, once the license reaches version 1.0.0, and is fully reviewed and finalized and legally debugged, not at the work-in-progress state it's in now obviously.)
This is where Amazon can show weather it's a jungle or just a big river. Put the ridicules patents it owns into a pool managed by the FSF and LI. Ask every member of LI to contribute some patents to the pool.
The right way to deal with this would seem to be to establish (as has been discussed elsewhere) a non-profit "patent custodian" that people can donate their patents to. Then have that organization use licenses for its patents as a lever to extract open source licensing for other key patents.
That, (as has been discussed here and elsewhere), is pretty much the idea I'm trying to promote with Patents in the Public Interest Inc., and the Open Patent License, under development at www.openpatents.org.
For example, if the GNOME folks had a few good patents, they might be able to get Adobe to release their color model handling for use in GNOME programs (and their derivatives). This really should not be an issue, since any GNOME derived program is subject to the GPL, and that means that most of Adobe's rivals won't touch it.
Exactly. (Especially since plug-ins usually are considered part of the work-as-a-whole with the thing they're plugging into, the patent license should be written to require the whole work to be an Open Patent work of some sort for the license to have a possibility allowing the patent to be incorporated into the plug-in. That way no one else could thwart the license by using just certain patent in non-Open Patent ways, which is as issue to be concerned about, as Chagrin pointed out in response #71.)
Also, to be fair, I would like to point out that I haven't seen anything that would paint Adobe as a villian in this area. They weren't too enthused about software patents six years ago, according to Douglas Brotz's statements at the Public Hearing on Use of the Patent System to Protect Software Related Inventions; the fact that they personally have patents that they seem not to have used offensively against Open Source efforts means I can't really ascribe any malice to them. In fact, even Microsoft hasn't used any of its software patents offensively.
I know you simply used Adobe as an example of a company that has happened to effectively be holding up progress, but I just wanted to point out that their interests probably mostly align with ours on the let's-not-get-sued-over-software-patents issues. I can't see that Adobe for instance has specifically worked to stop Free Software development, but I can see that their defensive patenting has had that as a side effect. I want the Open Patent license to be able to provide a way for them to safetly stop slowing progress without harming the defensive advantages their patents give them, as well as benefiting them by allowing them access to a larger Open Patent Pool of patents--I want the Open Patent License to be a win-win game for all players.
It is high time for the free software community to try an experiment with a Free Patent. It will be licensed for free to all end-users. For free software projects the only requirement to license it is to file a notice that you are using it with the patent holder and include some boilerplate text acknowledging the patent in your license. Commercial use requires the same notices and a small fee on a per program rather than per unit basis, plus some additional terms concerning licensing of that company's patent portfolio for use in free software. This could create a system in which defensive patents are used only defensively, to prevent anyone else from patenting an idea and using the patent against you.
(There are some differences, of course. Under the OPL, companies and programmers never have to pay a per-program or per-unit royalty, although they may be required to submit some of their own patents, as well as IP that acts similarly to patents--User-interface copyrights, some trade dress protections, not restrict reverse engineering, etc.--I'd like the license to help solve some potential UCITA and DMCA problems too. Also, I've separated out the requirements on submitting IP via Options of the license from using IP from the Pools of the license, which makes things easier to understand even with 7 Options and 7 Pools. For instance, there's the for-free-software-use "Pool F", and the for-proprietary-use you-can-use-these-patents-if-you-license-all-your software-patents-too "Pool 3".)
Establish a pool of open software patents....What are we waiting for?
Well, as for myself, I've been trying to promote the notion of an Open Patent License at www.openpatents.org The wait involved is in trying to make sure the license addresses what participants would want, and finding people who would be willing to submit patents by version 1.0.0.
If you're interested in helping with the license, or would be interested in submitting patents under the license, please let me know, or consider joining the mailing list.
Companies wishing to use any OSPP patents in closed-source products could do so for a fee and a cross-licensing agreement which allows all their patents to be used in open-source software for free under the OSPP license.
Anyone else have ideas as to how we can turn things around within the system? I'd prefer to start inside than try to break it from outside.
This is not so much a political idea, and is more UCITA-related than DMCA-related, but as one partial solution to help turn things around, I want the Open Patent License under development at www.openpatents.org to address more than simply patents.
There are IP's that aren't patents, but restrict users in ways similar to patents. For instance, reverse-engineering restrictions (basically restrictions on reading and thinking), are from a practical point of view a restriction very similar to patents, since they attempt to prevent some reimplementations of ideas, as opposed to the copyright-like restrictions on distributing duplicates of a specific implementation of the same ideas. Because of that, there are some patent-like IP's that the Open Patent License covers--there's little use in a patent cross-license agreement that is intended to solve some of the problems of software patents if the intent can be thwarted by reverse-engineering restrictions.
Perhaps the Open Patent License should also address these sorts of restrictions on access to a copyrighted document/work.
(Just to be clear, I don't agree with these sorts of restrictions on reading and thinking, and I doubt they'll hold up in court. But even if the US laws are eventually overturned in court or they're legislatively changed to become more sane, that's no reason not to address the same issues in a related IP license that doesn't limit itself to the US, especially since the US unfortunately doesn't have a monopoly on senseless IP laws.)
Of particular concern to the open source movement (which of course is an ultimate form of open standard) are the conditions meant to discourage open standards. For instance draconian prohibitions on reverse-engineering.
I'm trying to address at least that problem in the Open Patent License under development at www.openpatents.org. For instance, in order to be able to (given some other conditions) potentially use any of the software patents of everyone who has licensed all their software patents under one of the Options of this agreement, not only do you have to similarly license all your software patents as well, but you also have to license other "patent-like" IP that covers things such as look & feel copyrights and reverse engineering restrictions.
So even if reading were illegal, that is if reverse engineering restrictions were valid, a company that needed to use hundreds of patents potentially freely available to them if they were to agree to that sort of Option of the Open Patent License, would probably find it cheaper agree to one of those Options rather than both attempt to use legal means to hide their product from the eyes of their customers and license all the patents they need.
As long as there's a way to opt-out of the patent system and UCITA restrictions among agreeing participants, I'm guessing that most companies will find it cheaper to opt-out of those restrictions when possible when faced with the alternative of endlessly charging each other for red tape.
(International legal reform getting rid of these sorts of restrictions on reading and thinking would be a much better answer, but I think convincing businesses to save money and increase stability and growth might be an easier solution for the short term.)
An open patent pool could be made to work, if there are rules such as: you can use all the pool's patents of a specific type (e.g. software patents)
only if you give all your patents of that type to the pool. That way your patents are still a defense against others' patents.
Why is it so hard to imagine "Open Source" patents along the lines of the GPL?
That is what I am trying to do with the Open Patent License at www.openpatents.org/.
Here is the article I replied with:
Amazon is unquestionably an innovative company, given a definition of "innovation" that refers to implementation of ideas as opposed to merely theorizing about and coming up with ideas. (Like an Open Source development "show me the source" request versus long-winded non-productive discussions.) It's their excellent implementations both in programming and in management that makes them an otherwise excellent group to do business with and makes amazon.com such a well-run site.
But the fact that they spam their customers with an opt-out list instead of an opt-in list, and the fact that they're offensively using their patents against someone else, means I simply won't do business with them until both problems are resolved.
Other than those two things, I think they're a fine, upstanding business; however, when they do either or both things, they instantly become in my mind a business with questionable ethics, and I will simply not purchase from them.
Both problems are eminently solvable, and from the conversation it seems that Bezos would possibly consider softening his stance on licensing and enforcement of Amazon's patents. Now if both problems were solved, I would remove Amazon from my personal blacklist, and I would be vastly relieved after having done so. It really bothers me when a company that does so many things right, and does so many things well, has just a few minor (in that they are easily solvable) problems that mean I simply can't in good conscious deal with them. I have no qualms about a badly-run company that consistently provides poor quality service or shoddy merchandise going out of business; on the contrary, it's one of the most important things about economic stability that bad businesses fail. But I hate to see an otherwise well-run business try to slit it's own throat like this. I'd love to see them fix both problems, so that we can all put their past behind us in Internet time, so to speak.
That being said, I would suggest two solutions:
On the spam issue, Amazon should switch from an opt-out spam list to an opt-in spam list. It's an easy thing to do technically, and it would buy them goodwill. That's pretty much all there is to the spam issue, and since it's also off-topic, I'll not mention it again in this message.
On the patents issue, I would ask that Bezos seriously consider a patent cross-license agreement. I have to admit to a strong personal bias in this area, because I want to promote the Open Patent License in progress at www.openpatents.org. (Plug, plug.)
Without boring everyone with the details of the Open Patent License, (and if you read through it, you'll find that it can be boring to a mind-numbing extent--I welcome any help at improving it, BTW), one of its Options allows you to license all your software patents to everyone who similarly licenses theirs, allowing the patents to be incorporated into products or processes which only incorporate compatibly-licensed covered patent-ish IP. You still otherwise keep your patents, and you still keep the defensive value of them, but you'll be gaining the use of a growing pool of patents that can be used among participants' Open Patent products and services. (The patents can also be used in Open Source code given some conditions.)
Bezos says one of the reasons he's acquiring patents is for defense against future patent lawsuits. This license will help him there.
Granted, it won't help him against Barnes & Noble if they decide to sue him again for saying he has a greater market capitalization than they do, for instance, or for any other sort of almost-frivolous non-patent-related lawsuit, especially if Barnes & Noble agress to a compatible Option of the license. But, it can help him against Wal-Mart, because if Amazon agreed to the license-all-software-patents option and didn't otherwise license it's patents to Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart wouldn't be able to incorporate Amazon's patents without licensing all of its software patents too.
Note that in the license I've defined business method patents to be included within the definition of software patents.
I would think the advantages of Amazon leveraging its own software patents to gain the defensive value of a larger portfolio far outweigh the advantages Amazon currently has in using their patents defensively in non-patent-related lawsuits.
(BTW, the license covers not only patents, but some other IP that from a practical point of view creates restrictions that are similar to the restrictions of patents, such as copyrights on API's, reverse-engineering restrictions, user-interface copyrights, etc. That's why I said patent-ish earlier.)
At the expense of the ability to use patents defensively in non-patent-related lawsuits in which the other party is also a license, by agreeing to this license-all-software-patents option of the Open Patent License, Amazon can gain the use of any other patents compatibly licensed, can regain community goodwill, can end the patent-caused boycott, can protect themselves and the community from (some) software patent hindrances to innovation, and in so doing can even be said to be giving back to the community by taking a public stance that will help nurture the development of future software that would otherwise be stifled due to patent concerns.
I would ask that Amazon consider using the Open Patent License.
It's almost as bad as the idea of building an 'open source patent portfolio' and then acting just like the corporations, to teach them a lesson! no no no;P
I admit I was already writing a response with a pointer to www.openpatents.org, but you sort of beat me to that topic.
I don't understand. Why do you think putting together such a patent portfolio is a bad idea?
Of course, I don't have any "teach them a lesson" thoughts here. It's just that since corporations get around the problem with cross-licensing, I don't see why we can't or shouldn't do the same. Not doing so leaves us defenseless in that realm--we still can use patent--busting prior art, etc, and perhaps lobby for reform, but I don't think that's as effective, as cheap, or as quick to an individual solution. I consider worldwide patent law reform a more longer-term solution.
So instead of worrying that Open Source code writers are continually at risk of >$40k lawsuits even given patent-busting prior art, I'd personally rather try to convince corporations to cross-license their patents under the Open Patent License, (still in development), to preserve the defensive value of their patents while giving the advantage of gaining rights to use more and more patents over time, which will also let the patents be used Open Source code.
I don't understand what would be so objectionable about such a license.
I guess it could be useful for a company to GPL-licence a Patent, and then sell exemptions to that licence (like the Reiser-FS).
Or perhaps the company could consider using the Open Patent license, (still in progress), at www.openpatents.org, in which patents can be licensed for Open Source use if all other patents are available under the same Open Source license.
It also has Options for patent-holders to license patents such that they can be used in products containing only similarly-licensed or more stringently-licensed patents and patent-like IPs.
Slashdot Mirror
(And do email me, if you would--I admit that I've not put as much work into the project recently as I've meant, but it would be great to be able to talk with a patent attorney about a number of issues involved.)
That idea is more or less the sort of thing I want the Open Patent License in progress at openpatents.org to do.
(There are other plusses and minuses between the two, of course. IBM's lvm can do mirroring and raid at the lvol level instead, whereas the existing lvm requires you to raid the underlying physical volumes instead. But, you can put data in the existing LVM's lvols without worrying about destroying anything by writing over LVM datastructures as you would with IBM's, since IBM stores system data in the beginning of each lvol--In the current system you can safely make an lvol writable by a user, for instance.)
I'm not a lawyer or anything, but I'm trying to push for something similar with what's currently labelled "Option F" of the Open Patent License at www.openpatents.org, and in order to help the license become more useful when it is debugged in detail by lawyers, I would like to:
(And as you can see at the www.openpatents.org site, Raph does seem to be open to considering something like the OPL once it's stable.)
(I have thought about at some point letting patent-holders who've submitted their patents under one of the Options of the Open Patent License to sell non-Open Patent licenses through the site as well, where those sales would incur a small commision, all as a way of making the site self-funding in the long term. But all that's a ways off still--the first priority is to do the main Open Patents work first. However, I wasn't planning on listing non-Open Patents with that service, since I think that would be counter to the main goals of the site and organization.)
Even if we can't (yet) convince the patent office and legislatures about the harm of (software) patents, businesses who would rather bypass the whole mess but need to have their own patents for defensive reasons can still cross-license their patents among themselves.
It's not as effective a solution as international patent law reform, but at least it can be a partial solution for Open Source writers as well as give those who have defensive patents an even greater defense against any who use patents offensively, and it doesn't require an act of congress to implement.
That's the sort of solution I'm wanting to promote with the Open Patent License in development at www.openpatents.org.
If you have any suggestions as to how to better go about this, or suggestions on improvements to the license, please let me know, or join the mailing list.
Here are my thoughts:
(That is, once the license reaches version 1.0.0, and is fully reviewed and finalized and legally debugged, not at the work-in-progress state it's in now obviously.)
Also, to be fair, I would like to point out that I haven't seen anything that would paint Adobe as a villian in this area. They weren't too enthused about software patents six years ago, according to Douglas Brotz's statements at the Public Hearing on Use of the Patent System to Protect Software Related Inventions; the fact that they personally have patents that they seem not to have used offensively against Open Source efforts means I can't really ascribe any malice to them. In fact, even Microsoft hasn't used any of its software patents offensively.
I know you simply used Adobe as an example of a company that has happened to effectively be holding up progress, but I just wanted to point out that their interests probably mostly align with ours on the let's-not-get-sued-over-software-patents issues. I can't see that Adobe for instance has specifically worked to stop Free Software development, but I can see that their defensive patenting has had that as a side effect. I want the Open Patent license to be able to provide a way for them to safetly stop slowing progress without harming the defensive advantages their patents give them, as well as benefiting them by allowing them access to a larger Open Patent Pool of patents--I want the Open Patent License to be a win-win game for all players.
(There are some differences, of course. Under the OPL, companies and programmers never have to pay a per-program or per-unit royalty, although they may be required to submit some of their own patents, as well as IP that acts similarly to patents--User-interface copyrights, some trade dress protections, not restrict reverse engineering, etc.--I'd like the license to help solve some potential UCITA and DMCA problems too. Also, I've separated out the requirements on submitting IP via Options of the license from using IP from the Pools of the license, which makes things easier to understand even with 7 Options and 7 Pools. For instance, there's the for-free-software-use "Pool F", and the for-proprietary-use you-can-use-these-patents-if-you-license-all-your software-patents-too "Pool 3".)
If you're interested in helping with the license, or would be interested in submitting patents under the license, please let me know, or consider joining the mailing list.
There are IP's that aren't patents, but restrict users in ways similar to patents. For instance, reverse-engineering restrictions (basically restrictions on reading and thinking), are from a practical point of view a restriction very similar to patents, since they attempt to prevent some reimplementations of ideas, as opposed to the copyright-like restrictions on distributing duplicates of a specific implementation of the same ideas. Because of that, there are some patent-like IP's that the Open Patent License covers--there's little use in a patent cross-license agreement that is intended to solve some of the problems of software patents if the intent can be thwarted by reverse-engineering restrictions.
Perhaps the Open Patent License should also address these sorts of restrictions on access to a copyrighted document/work.
(Just to be clear, I don't agree with these sorts of restrictions on reading and thinking, and I doubt they'll hold up in court. But even if the US laws are eventually overturned in court or they're legislatively changed to become more sane, that's no reason not to address the same issues in a related IP license that doesn't limit itself to the US, especially since the US unfortunately doesn't have a monopoly on senseless IP laws.)
So even if reading were illegal, that is if reverse engineering restrictions were valid, a company that needed to use hundreds of patents potentially freely available to them if they were to agree to that sort of Option of the Open Patent License, would probably find it cheaper agree to one of those Options rather than both attempt to use legal means to hide their product from the eyes of their customers and license all the patents they need.
As long as there's a way to opt-out of the patent system and UCITA restrictions among agreeing participants, I'm guessing that most companies will find it cheaper to opt-out of those restrictions when possible when faced with the alternative of endlessly charging each other for red tape.
(International legal reform getting rid of these sorts of restrictions on reading and thinking would be a much better answer, but I think convincing businesses to save money and increase stability and growth might be an easier solution for the short term.)
Anyone who's interested in helping edit the license during the development stage please join the mailing list.
Here is the article I replied with:
Amazon is unquestionably an innovative company, given a definition of "innovation" that refers to implementation of ideas as opposed to merely theorizing about and coming up with ideas. (Like an Open Source development "show me the source" request versus long-winded non-productive discussions.) It's their excellent implementations both in programming and in management that makes them an otherwise excellent group to do business with and makes amazon.com such a well-run site.
But the fact that they spam their customers with an opt-out list instead of an opt-in list, and the fact that they're offensively using their patents against someone else, means I simply won't do business with them until both problems are resolved.
Other than those two things, I think they're a fine, upstanding business; however, when they do either or both things, they instantly become in my mind a business with questionable ethics, and I will simply not purchase from them.
Both problems are eminently solvable, and from the conversation it seems that Bezos would possibly consider softening his stance on licensing and enforcement of Amazon's patents. Now if both problems were solved, I would remove Amazon from my personal blacklist, and I would be vastly relieved after having done so. It really bothers me when a company that does so many things right, and does so many things well, has just a few minor (in that they are easily solvable) problems that mean I simply can't in good conscious deal with them. I have no qualms about a badly-run company that consistently provides poor quality service or shoddy merchandise going out of business; on the contrary, it's one of the most important things about economic stability that bad businesses fail. But I hate to see an otherwise well-run business try to slit it's own throat like this. I'd love to see them fix both problems, so that we can all put their past behind us in Internet time, so to speak.
That being said, I would suggest two solutions:
On the spam issue, Amazon should switch from an opt-out spam list to an opt-in spam list. It's an easy thing to do technically, and it would buy them goodwill. That's pretty much all there is to the spam issue, and since it's also off-topic, I'll not mention it again in this message.
On the patents issue, I would ask that Bezos seriously consider a patent cross-license agreement. I have to admit to a strong personal bias in this area, because I want to promote the Open Patent License in progress at www.openpatents.org. (Plug, plug.)
Without boring everyone with the details of the Open Patent License, (and if you read through it, you'll find that it can be boring to a mind-numbing extent--I welcome any help at improving it, BTW), one of its Options allows you to license all your software patents to everyone who similarly licenses theirs, allowing the patents to be incorporated into products or processes which only incorporate compatibly-licensed covered patent-ish IP. You still otherwise keep your patents, and you still keep the defensive value of them, but you'll be gaining the use of a growing pool of patents that can be used among participants' Open Patent products and services. (The patents can also be used in Open Source code given some conditions.)
Bezos says one of the reasons he's acquiring patents is for defense against future patent lawsuits. This license will help him there.
Granted, it won't help him against Barnes & Noble if they decide to sue him again for saying he has a greater market capitalization than they do, for instance, or for any other sort of almost-frivolous non-patent-related lawsuit, especially if Barnes & Noble agress to a compatible Option of the license. But, it can help him against Wal-Mart, because if Amazon agreed to the license-all-software-patents option and didn't otherwise license it's patents to Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart wouldn't be able to incorporate Amazon's patents without licensing all of its software patents too.
Note that in the license I've defined business method patents to be included within the definition of software patents.
I would think the advantages of Amazon leveraging its own software patents to gain the defensive value of a larger portfolio far outweigh the advantages Amazon currently has in using their patents defensively in non-patent-related lawsuits.
(BTW, the license covers not only patents, but some other IP that from a practical point of view creates restrictions that are similar to the restrictions of patents, such as copyrights on API's, reverse-engineering restrictions, user-interface copyrights, etc. That's why I said patent-ish earlier.)
At the expense of the ability to use patents defensively in non-patent-related lawsuits in which the other party is also a license, by agreeing to this license-all-software-patents option of the Open Patent License, Amazon can gain the use of any other patents compatibly licensed, can regain community goodwill, can end the patent-caused boycott, can protect themselves and the community from (some) software patent hindrances to innovation, and in so doing can even be said to be giving back to the community by taking a public stance that will help nurture the development of future software that would otherwise be stifled due to patent concerns.
I would ask that Amazon consider using the Open Patent License.
-Mark Shewmaker
mark@primefactor.com
www.openpatents.org
(Note, the license is still in development. I would obviously not want them to agree to a beta version of a patent license.)
I don't understand. Why do you think putting together such a patent portfolio is a bad idea?
Of course, I don't have any "teach them a lesson" thoughts here. It's just that since corporations get around the problem with cross-licensing, I don't see why we can't or shouldn't do the same. Not doing so leaves us defenseless in that realm--we still can use patent--busting prior art, etc, and perhaps lobby for reform, but I don't think that's as effective, as cheap, or as quick to an individual solution. I consider worldwide patent law reform a more longer-term solution.
So instead of worrying that Open Source code writers are continually at risk of >$40k lawsuits even given patent-busting prior art, I'd personally rather try to convince corporations to cross-license their patents under the Open Patent License, (still in development), to preserve the defensive value of their patents while giving the advantage of gaining rights to use more and more patents over time, which will also let the patents be used Open Source code.
I don't understand what would be so objectionable about such a license.
It also has Options for patent-holders to license patents such that they can be used in products containing only similarly-licensed or more stringently-licensed patents and patent-like IPs.