• To: 'Robin Cover' <robin@o...>
• Subject: RE: Another Microsoft XML patent
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 13:08:43 -0500
• Cc: 'Rick Jelliffe' <ricko@a...>, xml-dev@l...

No, it is not a long term solution.  It is the Marx Brothers 
"Night at the Opera" approach.  It makes sure it becomes a 
comedy by inflation instead of a tragedy by circumcision.

Nobody will win.  It will make patents irrelevant because 
it will cost too much to prosecute them (they will interlock 
and overlap and become entropic).  They become Confederate 
money or pre-WWII German deutschemarks.

Thanks Robin, for the detailed and well-referenced reply.

len

From: Robin Cover [mailto:robin@o...]

If Len's observation about the need for individuals and
small companies to file (like crazy!) for patents is correct, it's
hardly a long-term solution.  It exacerbates the acknowledged
problem of the "patent thicket" in which nobody can know what's
patented ("everything" already is) and nobody except the largest
patent holders -- as a general rule -- can hope to "win" in a
showdown.

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