January 17, 2003
Patents, Microsoft and W3C
I urge you to read this lenghty, well-informed mail from David Turner from Microsoft to www-patentpolicy-comment@w3.org. It offers a somehow twisted, but very eloquent overview of the worries that big companies with active patent issueing and licensing policies have. Intertwinglied and coincidently, my synapses fire off related thoughts:- Before founding Outerthought, I have been working for a company which was very actively pursuing patent creation in its research department.
- Quite some people in these departments were funded with government money, working on EU projects. I assume the same is true for US companies.
- This is basically our taxpayer's money being used by companies to issue patents for that company's sole good.
- Marc attended an open source seminar with Arnoud Engelfriet, working for such a consumer electronics company, precisely the kind of company Turner is referring to.
- This company has recently closed down a business unit in Hasselt (Belgium), resulting in the layoff of more than 1000 employees. The pressrelease has disappeared from their website.