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Subject: Of un-patents and un-inventions
One of the underlying threads with the current OASIS IPR policies seems to be this notion of protection from the boogeyman of USPTO patents. But what if instead of passively waiting for the boogeyman to come - we created a wall of preemptive strikes? Attack afterall is the best means of defense. Filing USPTO patents is not an option as that merely falls into the same bear trap that we are trying to avoid in the first place. It suddenly occurred to me - that creating un-patents and un-inventing is entirely possible - and indeed we could create a review board and repository to receive these. These would be a powerful antidote to any possible future claims - and also make nice references for the OASIS specifications to cite the un-invention and un-patent. Notice I have two issued USPTO patents that I filed some years back - so I'm very familiar with the regular patent process. In the course of any given year I probably have 10 or 15 notions that would be highly "patentable" - and if I worked for Microsoft or IBM I'm sure they would file them. Many times these ideas simply end up as part of the embodiment of an OASIS specification, because they are part of the process of developing the specification. Example - the work I've just done on a trusted voting process: http://drrw.net/backup/Trusted-Ballot-Processing-Nutshell.pdf The irritating thing about this situation is that some twit could file a USPTO patent based on some variation of an idea that had become public - and then hold a whole community hostage around that - or so the theory goes anyway - and we seem to be convinced that this boogeyman is real enough to warrent IPR policies and enforcement, and declarations and what not. But if we had an un-invention mechanism - anyone who had any concerns could simply put together an un-invention statement and file that to the un-invention repository. Also - an un-invention is by its nature a lot easier to draft - stating what it is that you are un-inventing - and why you feel its an un-invention - such as stating that the whole thing is clearly self-evident and reliant on prior work (within OASIS would be nice!) - and notions that are already publicly known (such as in specifications or the un-invention repository). And just as the USPTO issues patents - an authorative body such as OASIS could receive un-patents and un-inventions, have peer review boards review same for accuracy and completeness - and then log them into a Kavi for public access. The beauty of this - since its an un-invention - its does not matter if someone else already has another un-invention that is broadly similar, that merely reinforces the un-invention again. This makes the review boards job much easier. They don't need to worry about prior art - et al - just that the un-invention makes technical sense. Since the USPTO does not seem to ever read public specifications or open sourced licensed components - this would also give the USPTO a convenient means to check the un-invention registry on Kavi before taking the stupid step of issue one of their own software invention licenses. So OK - I'm dreaming that OASIS would ever do this - or the W3C - but certainly someone elsewhere could - and probably the EU for one would be a great potential home from an un-invention repository. OK - shoot this idea down for me!?! DW
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