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Against Monopoly

defending the right to innovate

Monopoly corrupts. Absolute monopoly corrupts absolutely.





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The Pre-History of the RIM-NTP Patent Dispute

Geoff Goodfellow appears to be the inventor of wireless e-mail, which he did not patent, according to this story. He has a properly jaundiced view of patents, as does Mitch Kapor, who notes that NTP's patents should never have been issued.

Comments

Mitch Kapor seems like kind of a "born again" advocate of openness. He was the founder of Lotus Corporation - the company that took the Visicalc idea of the spreadsheet and made it into a huge commercial success. Besides their spreadsheet Lotus 123, they were best known for their aggressive copy protection - how many hours did we spend looking around for Lotus "key disks" so we could access our data? It is widely believed that the reason Quattro Pro was so successful at taking away Lotus's market was that it they dropped the "DRM".
I like this quote from Goodfellow: "You don't patent the obvious. The way you compete is to build something that is faster, better, cheaper. You don't lock your ideas up in a patent and rest on your laurels."

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French firm has patents on using computers to choose medical treatment 1

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French firm has patents on using computers to choose medical treatment 1

French firm has patents on using computers to choose medical treatment 1

French firm has patents on using computers to choose medical treatment 1

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