Re: Software patents

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

At 2:41 am -0400 on 4/30/97, Lucky Green wrote:


> Anecdote: at a conference, I asked a patent attorney what strategy to
> follow if your patented technology is only happening in the client
> software. He looked at me like I was drooling on myself and said: "Uhm...
> Well... Then you have a problem."
>
> IANAL, but I suppose the best strategy for the owners of a shaky software
> patent would be to make people believe that their technology is patented in
> many more jurisdictions than it actually is.

I expect two things will happen with the blind signature patent. Either
Digicash licenses the patent  or they don't. :-).

If they do, they have a real good chance of actually making back all the
money they've wasted so far trying to figure out what kind of business they
should be in, which is, again, cryptography.

If they don't license the patent, they will either find a greater fool to
invest in further, um, personal growth, until the patent expires (likely to
me this afternoon, :-)), or someone will actually buy the patent out of the
rubble and hopefully license it.

Under no circumstances do I see any commercial use of the blind signature
patent without the unencumbered legal permission of that patent's owner
(whoever that ends up being). Even the threat of legal action, justified or
not, will sufficiently perturb the economics of starting up a digital
bearer certificate market to prevent any action in those markets without
the patent holder.


I think comparisons to VCRs are inappropriate, because every point of
digital cash exchange between the net and the meatspace finance world can
be slapped with an injunction, and, actual money, changing hands, will be
taken away from someone.

Contributory enfringement may or may not occur in the client, but the fact
is, a trusted thrid party, a financial intermediary, needs to underwrite
the negotiable instrument that a Chaumian digital cash certificate
represents. In order to be trustworthy, that underwriter needs a trustee,
and, for the time being, those trustees will be banks of deposit, subject
to all the state-monopolized "physical" law of meatspace, including patent
law.

Banks, in their current incarnation as account-based book-entry entries,
cannot ignore the law of nation states, because the very efficacy of their
transaction settlement schems requires the physical force of a nation state
to prevent non-repudiation of those transactions.

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga




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