Comment by coldpie
2 months ago
No, I don't buy it. If the patents are publicly and perpetually freely licensed except for defensive-only purposes, then sure, they're not unethical. Red Hat's patent promise ( https://www.redhat.com/en/about/patent-promise ) is one example. If patents were actually intended for defensive purposes only, then this would be an easy and uncontroversial thing to do. However, in practice this is vanishingly rare, and lawyers fight against it tooth & nail. This tells you that the companies do not actually file them for defensive-only purposes, unlike what you claim.
My friend, you really don't know what you are talking about, and getting all riled up like this is not the right way to learn.
Freely licensing your patents doesn't protect you against patent trolls. I wrote out how patent fights work in another comment, but here it is again.
Company A comes to Company B and says, "Hey! You are infringing on one of my patents!"
Company B says, "oh really? Well let me look through my collection of patents and see if you are infringing on any of mine."
Company A says, "oh, um, nevermind, I think I was mistaken."
Company B says, "yes, that's what I thought"
Now, imagine if Company B had already freely licensed all their patents. That defense wouldn't work.
I agree with you that it's a crappy system, but simply standing with your arms folded and saying, "I'm not playing," isn't going to work.
Yes, that's the reason for the "except for defensive purposes" part. Quoting from Red Hat's promise:
> Our Promise also does not extend to the actions of a party (including past actions) if at any time the party or its affiliate asserts a patent in proceedings against Red Hat (or its affiliate) or any offering of Red Hat (or its affiliate) (including a cross-claim or counterclaim).
Company B may still consult its portfolio and exercise it against Company A defensively, because Company A revoked its license of Company B's patents by asserting against Company B in the first place.
So in other words, Red Hat does not freely license their patents, they say "you are free as long as you don't come after us." Which is exactly the system 99% of companies follow, just more formally stated. Yet you berated the poor guy from Pebble for even obtaining the patent he did??
3 replies →
Perhaps you shouldn't hijack every thread about anything and make it about patents.
I replied to one comment thread. Perhaps you should put on your big boy pants and use the little [-] thing to minimize threads you aren't interested in reading.