From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Tue Dec 22 1998 - 05:41:45 MST
Hal Finney [hal@rain.org] wrote:
>In cryptography, the researcher sometimes called the "patron saint"
>of cypherpunks, David Chaum, has a number of patents on technologies
>which can greatly enhance freedom and privacy. It appears that the
>hope of patent protection has been a significant motivation for him.
>This is what you risk losing if you eliminate patents.
Citing Chaum as an argument for patents seems bizarre to me. Last time I
hung out with a bunch of cypherpunks, most times Chaum's name was mentioned
were in comments like: 'Chaum's patents are a major cause of the lack of
privacy on the Net', 'Do you think Chaum's being paid to keep anonymous
ecash off the market?', 'How can we work around Chaum's patents and set up
our own anonymous ecash system?' and 'When do Chaum's patents expire so we
can have anonymous ecash at last?'
The ecash blinding patent isn't as obvious as an XOR cursor, but it's not
far from it. If Chaum hadn't patented it someone else would have discovered
it by now and it would probably be widely used in anonymous systems; but
because Chaum did patent it the technology is languishing and won't see
widespread use until the patent expires. This seems to be a major argument
*against* patents, not for them.
On the more general front, the main problem with software and computer
hardware patents is that twenty-year monopolies are absurd in an industry
where the technology changes every year or two; a twenty-year monopoly is
effectively infinite, because the patented technology will almost certainly
be obsolete by the time the patent expires. This is not true in, say, auto
manufacture, where the basic technology has changed little in the last
century.
Mark
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