If you can't beat em, join em.

If you can't beat em, join em.

Posted Jun 1, 2004 7:15 UTC (Tue) by error27 (subscriber, #8346)
In reply to: If you can't beat em, join em. by JoeBuck
Parent article: An open letter from Alan Cox

> If you invented it, you have to get the patent.

I don't think you're a lawyer, but you may be right.

Perhaps, I could let the third-party get the patent in my name and then relicense it to them.

> An alternative is to build up a GPL patent pool

That's not a viable alternative because no one in the Free software community has any cash and most people aren't organized enough to use the patent pool effectively in any case.

In my scenario, you would only patent things when you have a good chance of making money through licensing or law suits.

It's funny to me... You would think that Microsoft would be opposed to software patents since they have lost millions of dollars because of bogus software patents. Instead of trying to fix the patent laws they are taking advantage of them to hurt the competition. I think that if enough people adopted my plan, Microsoft would realise that the patent laws were broken and lobby to have them fixed.

---

(Log in to post comments)