Title: [chairs] Of un-patents and un-inventions
Despite the emotive force of the term "un-invention", it is a horribly
inaccurate term, because it would be inventive, and that would cause
considerable confusion. Note that I'm not objecting to the term "un-patent"
(unwieldy though it is).
May I suggest you try out other terms like "open invention", or "freely
reusable idea" (could be abbreviated to FRI)?
"I want to lodge an un-patent"
"You want FRIs with that?"
:-)
-----Original Message-----
From: David Webber
(XML) [mailto:]
Sent: Mon 14-Mar-05 16:02
To: Chairs OASIS
Cc:
Subject: [chairs] Of
un-patents and un-inventions
One of the underlying threads with the current OASIS IPR
policies
seems to be this notion of protection from the boogeyman
of
USPTO patents.
But what if instead of passively waiting for the
boogeyman to
come - we created a wall of preemptive strikes? Attack
afterall
is the best means of defense. Filing USPTO patents is not
an
option as that merely falls into the same bear trap that we
are
trying to avoid in the first place.
It suddenly occurred to me - that
creating un-patents and un-inventing
is entirely possible - and indeed we
could create a review board
and repository to receive these. These
would be a powerful antidote
to any possible future claims - and also make
nice references for
the OASIS specifications to cite the un-invention and
un-patent.
Notice I have two issued USPTO patents that I filed some
years
back - so I'm very familiar with the regular patent
process.
In the course of any given year I probably have 10 or 15
notions that
would be highly "patentable" - and if I worked for Microsoft
or IBM
I'm sure they would file them. Many times these ideas
simply
end up as part of the embodiment of an OASIS
specification,
because they are part of the process of developing the
specification.
Example - the work I've just done on a trusted voting
process:
http://drrw.net/backup/Trusted-Ballot-Processing-Nutshell.pdf
The
irritating thing about this situation is that some twit could file a
USPTO
patent based on some variation of an idea that had become
public - and then
hold a whole community hostage around that - or
so the theory goes anyway -
and we seem to be convinced that
this boogeyman is real enough to warrent
IPR policies and
enforcement, and declarations and what not. But if
we had
an un-invention mechanism - anyone who had any concerns
could
simply put together an un-invention statement and file
that to the
un-invention repository. Also - an un-invention is
by its nature a
lot easier to draft - stating what it is that you
are un-inventing - and
why you feel its an un-invention - such
as stating that the whole thing is
clearly self-evident and
reliant on prior work (within OASIS would be
nice!) - and
notions that are already publicly known (such as in
specifications
or the un-invention repository).
And just as the
USPTO issues patents - an authorative body such
as OASIS could receive
un-patents and un-inventions, have
peer review boards review same for
accuracy and completeness -
and then log them into a Kavi for public
access.
The beauty of this - since its an un-invention - its does not
matter
if someone else already has another un-invention that is
broadly
similar, that merely reinforces the un-invention again. This
makes
the review boards job much easier. They don't need to
worry
about prior art - et al - just that the un-invention makes
technical
sense.
Since the USPTO does not seem to ever read public
specifications
or open sourced licensed components - this would also give
the
USPTO a convenient means to check the un-invention
registry on Kavi
before taking the stupid step of issue one of
their own software invention
licenses.
So OK - I'm dreaming that OASIS would ever do this - or
the
W3C - but certainly someone elsewhere could - and probably
the EU
for one would be a great potential home from an
un-invention
repository.
OK - shoot this idea down for
me!?!
DW
