[JDEV] Slashdot article on IM Bots patent

[David Waite]

That is not how patents work, unfortunately. You must develop it 
independantly _and_ develop it first. AFAIK, the only way to resolve 
disputes is to wait for the patent holder to take you to court, at which 
time they may ask for sale of your product to be blocked while the 
courts decide.

It was a system to help independant inventors and protect their work 
from just being taken and mass-produced, but now IMHO does the exact 
opposite - even if you are an independant inventor with a cool idea, the 
concepts your invention is based on will be covered by patents help by 
the large corporate companies which swoop in wanting to produce it, 
meaning that you _must_ let them do so, or you cannot sell your own 
invention either. Even if the patents brought to you by these third 
parties are pointless, the burden will be on you to prove you are not 
infringing or that the patents are invalid.

-David Waite

Jeremy Lunn wrote:

>On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 03:00:44PM -0600, Ben Schumacher wrote:
>  
>
>>Yes, but this patent is specifically directed towards instant messaging
>>bots. I guess it just a question of how you define instant messaging.
>>    
>>
>
>Doesn't something have to be specifically developed from the Patent
>anyway?  So if you develop something independent to any information
>about the Patent then there's nothing they could do about it.  Though
>could be a hell of a job to proove except for something that is *that*
>logical.
>
>  
>