From: b645zaw@utarlg.uta.edu (Stephen Tice)
Subject: Re: The harsh light of reality: the industry is static.
Date:  3 SEP 91 19:22:42    
Organization: The University of Texas at Arlington


rusti@erg.sri.com (Rusti Baker) writes...

> ... I am more concerned about the second point, that the industry is being
> monopolized through litigation regarding ownership of technology in joint
> ventures, and over patents.

[and ...]

> litigation poses such a menace to innovation and research in this area.
> At this point, any new startup in this field needs to have a sizable war 
> chest (for legal fees) in order to get their product to market.

The fix is easy -- change the patent law so that the initial (and key) step
of a claim is **publication of prototype details** in a *public* forum. 

Advantages:

(1) Everyone benefits as those ideas we all want discuss (but don't dare 
for fear of loosing claim) germinate new ideas in other designers.

(2) The quality of information sufficient would need to be adequate to
establish validity (vague statements == no claim).

(3) Preference is given to publication on the net since the original times
become a matter of veriable and widely disseminated records.

(4) Proof in court is a simple (lawyers of course will debate this) matter
of who published first. An example of how well this works is as near as
copyright law. Do any of you doubt that our authors are well protected?

(5) Monetary reward is made more readily available to researchers, since
there already adept at the publish/perish == demo/die process. Oh, yeah
I guess public demonstration (videotaped by media?) could also set the
claim.

Disadvantages:

Hah! As freely given as criticism is in NetNews, why should I shoot at 
my own proposal? :-}

In keeping with the thread, it's simply not good business to talk
about new projects when corporate business is run like warfare.

Industry is static because we stand on legal finesse instead of
simple fact.  The remedy, make original open publication the
key to patent claim.

  __ _  _   _    _     _      _       _        _         _          _

      = Stephen T. =        []   Prometheus is unbound!  
 (b645zaw@utarlg.uta.edu)   []                 Let Freedom reign ...