Re: Gates Patents Flipping a Light Switch

[David Kastrup]

AES/newspost <siegman@stanford.edu> writes:

> In article <x5wu2fe2u5.fsf@lola.goethe.zz>, David Kastrup
> <dak@gnu.org>
> wrote:
> 
> > Uh, you are forgetting one thing: everyone else has the option of
> > buying a licence from you.  That's the whole point in the first place.
> 
> a) Buying a license is NOT an option that's necessarily available to
> everyone else -- only if the patent holder chooses to offer a
> license, at whatever price he sets.  Other than a few exceptional
> situations, there's no general requirement that a patent holder
> offer licenses; he can just bar everyone else from using the idea at
> all.

Well in Germany, if you don't licence your patent, it doubles the
patent fees.

But I agree that I was of the impression that you _had_ to offer
licences at "reasonable rates" and was surprised that by doubling
your fees, you could refuse to do so.

There are cases were forced licence grants happen, but they are
probably not done too often.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum