[Coco] Re: JPEG
James Ross
jr at webross.com
Sun May 9 02:10:20 EDT 2004
Roger Taylor wrote:
>James Ross wrote:
>>I hope you are joking :) I don't know of any inventor that would come
>>up with something really cool, patent it, and just wait around and
>>count how many people steal it and make dollars with it, unless the
>>plan was for the lawsuit to begin with.
>Nope, it's not a joke. I'm convinced that there are hundreds, if not,
>thousands of patent holders who do wait around and see how many people will
>steal it before their lawsuit will be worth the hassle.
No doubt that many companies patent anything and everything that the
office will let them
just in case it is a good idea. Most of them are
probably not. If they were they would be making money on it and
protecting their patent dutifully. Only a lazy fat cat would wait
around for years and years to make money by a lawsuit with a good idea
that they own. I think this rare. You think there are thousands. I
doubt it.
More than likely in the beginning of the jpeg & gif saga, they were
freely making the specs available with example code and such so that
the format would become popular and they could make a few bucks of
their product that used the format. Probably few strings attached, no
signed licenses and such. Now all the sudden, years later, aha, we
could make a lot more money my suing than actually working! What a
concept!
JR
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