Copyright, and stones

[Magnus Danielson]

From: "jhaible" <jhaible at debitel.net>
Subject: Re: Copyright, and stones
Date: Sat, 4 Dec 1999 01:32:58 +0100

> From: John E Blacet <blacet at metro.net>
> 
> > There is a lot of misleading information being posted on this topic!
> >
> > There are only two ways to protect an electronic circuit: a patent or
> > keep it secret. Once it is published, IN ANY FORM, including the
> > Internet, it is in the public domain and may be used by anyone. Fair or
> > not, this IS the way it works.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> And you can make patents in a way that they reveal more than they
> protect, too. Recently I stumbled across the Deltalab patents - they
> are so detailed that you could easily clone them just from the patent
> text. The funny thing is, there is an Effectron schematics drawing
> around that has barely readable component values. Now imagine
> the patent text has the right component values listed one by one.
> The patent text !
> It's probably easier to work around a certain solution to avoid
> infringement, than finding a solution that was not published at all.
> Which brings us back to potting, re-labelling chips and all that stuff ...

The graphics is more a supportive part of the patent's claims part. Besides,
if I recall things correctly there is a USA demand to unvield the best
implementation possible, not just one of many. This all comes downs to what
patents really is, they are a method for documenting the advances in
technology for the benefit of the nation where the benefit for the inventor
is that he in return is given the monopoly on the invention for some time
(17-25 years). This is a very wise decission that virtually all nations have
adapted.

So, if you go in and reed the Moog patent, you are supposed to actually be
able to build it even in a commercial product now that the patent has expired.
Patents that are expired are there to be used!

> Hmm, this was not about the ethical thread - I just thought you
> might find it interesting. I for one was puzzled to find that
> Deltalab patent with specified component values, while the
> last patent I was working on spoke of "first things" and "second things"
> from beginning to end (;->).

Yeah, there are many ways to write a patent, it also comes down to what you
feel is worth protecting and what you feel is open. For some cases you migth
want to protect surrounding technology in separate patents, and then you don't
want to say too much in the wrong place, your own patents may work against you!

Also, there is a diffrence between diffrent writers of patents, the quality
may vary quite alot.

For instance, if you look at IBMs 8B10B patent (the line encoding of Fibre
Channel and Gigabit Ethernet) you will discover that it is full of
gate-for-gate schematics detailing a full implementation of both the encoder
and decoder, obviously to prove the point that there is an efficient hardware
implementation form.

Cheers,
Magnus