[LINK] Is it unethical to infringe a patent?

Geoffrey Ramadan gramadan at umd.com.au
Sat Aug 19 14:50:33 AEST 2006


Howard Lowndes wrote:
>
> rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au wrote:
>> Brendan,
>>
>> Brendan Scott wrote:
>>
>>> Just an open question really.  Assuming that patents are a form  of 
>>> property:
>>>
>>> (a) would it be unethical to infringe a patent?  (eg: exercise a 
>>> patent without the permission of the patent holder)
>>>  
>>>
>> The answer is a simple "no", because the legal position (and an 
>> ethical position which flows from it) depends on the patent holder, 
>> not the infringer. If a patent holder chooses not to act upon 
>> infringement, there is no breach of the law.
>
> There is a problem from the holder viewpoint though; if they don't 
> aggressively defend their patents then they can run the risk of losing 
> them, just like trademarks.
I know of one large USA based company that has an extensive patent 
portfolio, that decided one day to see what it had (it didn't know!!) 
and discovered they owned the patent to a technology used in "smart 
batteries" (i.e. the battery includes an IC which monitors its own 
charge and communicates this to the appliance - eg. Sony video cameras 
and IBM notebooks etc).... which had been used in the market place for 
years.

It cost them over $20M to defend and they had recovered about $100m in 
royalties.

They are now seeing what other patents they can "collect" on. However, 
due to the cost, they say the will be very selective.

I have always had the view that, unless you are willing to protect your 
patent (or you want to sell it) then don't get one.

Geoffrey Ramadan


>
>





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