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Message
From: Richard Tierney<rt-opencores@c...>
Date: Mon Oct 1 11:09:58 CEST 2007
Subject: [oc] patents and logic cores
You need to step back a bit. What is a patent?Historically, individuals who made commercially-significant discoveries
would keep them secret, since this was the only way to protect them.
This wasn't in the interests of the state, who needed a mechanism to
ensure disclosure.
The modern patent dates from 17th-century England. It was an agreement
between the inventor and the government: the inventor provided written
full disclosure and, in return, the government granted the inventor a
limited-period monopoly on the commercial exploitation of that
invention. Of course, the British government had no way of granting a
monopoly in any other country, and the same remains true today, for all
national governments. The inventor therefore had (and still has) to make
a choice: was it better to provide disclosure in return for the limited
monopoly, or was it better to keep the invention secret, which might
give a better long-term return, particularly in international markets?
The situation is exactly the same today. Different national governments
have different standards for what constitutes an 'invention' (in the US,
for example, you can get a patent on a perpetual motion machine, among
many other other absurd things), but national law still does not, and
cannot, extend across national frontiers. If you want to patent an
'invention', you first start by finding out where your markets are, and
then you take out national patents in those markets. Some countries may
allow a monopoly for an 'international' patent of some sort (a European
patent, for example); that's a decision that is made by the government
of that country.
Back to your questions:
1 - the location of a 'server', whatever that is, can make no
difference. All that matters is commercial exploitation. Note that, if
you give something away for free in a territory in which a patent-holder
has a commerical monopoly right, then they clearly have a case against
you, but only in that territory.
2 - Knowledge is free, and is not protected by most governments (not by
patent, anyway). Those that do protect knowledge protect it by the
threat or use of violence (of course, that's the only way that any
government can actually govern, but that's a different matter). Again,
all that matters (for a patent) is commercial exploitation.
3 - 'Algorithms' cannot be patented in many countries; certainly not the
UK, probably nowhere in Europe. It may be possible to patent an
'algorithm' in the US; I don't know and don't care (I suspect that it
is, given the RSA encryption patent [using algorithms which,
incidentally, had already long been developed and used by the British]).
4 - If it's not already obvious, and to elmininate any confusion: you
can do anything you want with the information contained in a national
patent but, if you infringe the inventor's monopoly rights in that
country, you may end up in a court in that country, if you let them
catch you.
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