From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@www.aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Oct 01 1999 - 15:56:44 MDT
On Fri, 1 Oct 1999, Jeff Davis wrote:
> Which lead to my question.
>
> Does a patent prohibit all unlicensed use of the patented thingie, or just
> the unlicensed *commercial* use?
My impression is that a patent in no way prevents any use. A patent
"holder" is allowed to dictate/enforce that it can not be used
(by anyone). So you have to go into court and prove that the
patent was infringed. The only possible exception to this that I'm
aware of is that you may be allowed to infringe on patents if it can be
demonstrated you are doing so in the process of developing something for
FDA approval (in the U.S.).
[I would like some more in-depth confirmation of this.]
> Or, to use a pointed example, if I start a cryonics cooperative,
> which is a non-commercial organization whose members perform their
> own suspensions on one another, and don't sell anything to anyone,
> can I, without paying the patent holders, and without legal vulnerability,
> use patented equipment, materials, or procedures?
>
If there is another organization (perhaps a Cryonics organization)
holding the patent rights, then they *can* prevent you from using
said equipment, materials, procedures in the countries in which
the patent is valid (if the courts enforce the patents).
In the Cryonics business, I doubt there is much incentive for
invoking patent restrictions against others. You would have to
make the case that the revenue you would gain by forcing customers
to switch to you (as the supplier) would offset any legal costs
required for patent enforcement.
Patents related to Cryonics are an interesting area, since most
of the people involved would like to promote the field. Presumably
they would like to license (on a non-exclusive basis) patent
rights (for freezing procedures, ice-blocking agents, antifreezes,
etc.) to as many Cryonics organizations as possible [because if
everyone uses the best methods, it promotes Cryonics as a legitimate
activity.]
Whether they want to license those materials/methods on a non-exlusive
basis to other organizations (for say organ transplants) is an open
question because it depends on the potential revenue involved.
People will pay more for an exclusive license than a non-exclusive
license. I think, in general, until the volume of transplants
or cryonics suspensions moves up at least 2-3 orders of magnitude
that any potential revenue from patents in these fields is likely
to be minimal (so the costs of trying to protect/enforce the
patents would exceed the revenues gained from such enforcement).
Unless you can force defendents in patent suits to pay the
enforcement costs (Greg or someone else who knows this should
comment), then it seems to make little sense to pursue these
options until the markets are much larger.
Robert
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