Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
> Open source patents: Four companies offer green tech to public domain
>
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | So it turns out that the Eco-Patent Commons, which I wrote about
> | back in January, isn’t just another empty-handed cooperative
> | industry effort.
> |
> | Three new companies, Bosch, DuPont and Xerox, have joined the
> | effort and another, Sony, has contributed an additional patent to
> | the community.
> `----
>
> http://blogs.zdnet.com/green/?p=1341
Yes, very altruistic I'm sure. However, rather than making restitution
after the fact, wouldn't it be better for such companies to simply not
abuse Intellectual Monopolies in the first place? Why exactly did they
create these monopolies, if they didn't intend to abuse the "exclusive
rights" to their academic findings? Must every creation be patented to
"protect" it? Surely the mere existence of original work is sufficient
evidence of prior art to "protect" it from further monopoly abuse. Can
patents be voluntarily revoked by the "inventor"? Then why not do that
instead of creating these patent "charities"? Perhaps it's because the
companies involved would miss out on such good "PR opportunities", and
undermine the false premise that Intellectual Monopoly is necessary to
begin with. Yes, this is indeed "altruism" at its finest.
Also, I'm not quite sure what any of this has to do with Free Software
or even software of any kind. AFAICT these patents are about recycling
and environmental sustainability, and seem to have been prompted by an
obligation to meet legally enforced targets on emissions and waste. If
these companies really wanted to give away their "exclusive rights" to
their precious technology, then they could have chosen something a bit
less obvious than something they were legally coerced into developing.
Subsequently tossing the results into the beggars cap, seems more like
contempt for environmental policy, than an acceptance of the principle
of altruism in academia.
--
K.
http://slated.org
.----
| By bucking Microsoft for open source, says Gunderloy, "I'm no
| longer contributing to the eventual death of programming."
| ~ http://www.linux.com/feature/142083
`----
Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.25.11-60.fc8
09:02:09 up 29 days, 6:15, 4 users, load average: 0.74, 0.80, 0.41
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