[asterisk-users] Verizon-Vonage Lawsuit

[Stephen Bosch]

Salvatore Giudice wrote:
> BTW, the main problem with these patents is that they tend to lower the rate
> of adoption for new standards. Nothing kills a standard quicker than when
> someone patents it.
> 
> For example, someone out there even has a patent on ENUM:
> http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20060020713.html?highlight=enum&stemming=on
> 
> It made me mad that he beat me to it. Roflol... Regardless, this won't help
> with ENUM adoption.
> 
> Any joker with about $6k per patent and some time on his hands to monitor
> emerging standards can easily generate some patent entertainment for
> themselves at the expense of others...
> 
> So, the question of the day is: "Have you thought about patenting something
> today?"
> 
> It's easy. I just got a new idea while writing this for an ENUM related
> patent that I may pursue at some point... =)

The US patent system is totally broken. It started with lobbying efforts
to relax the applicability rules for patents for short-term gain. In the
long term, it's going to do big damage to American competitiveness.

And that's the sad thing about this. It discourages actual innovation
(despite Wall Street protests to the contrary). If everytime you want to
build on somebody else's work you have to build a skein of licencing
agreements, you start to ask yourself, "why should I bother?" More and
more companies are answering that one with "We shouldn't" -- there's
enough action to be had in other parts of the world, where the
conditions are much less onerous.

Another example of that kind of short-sighted thinking is what happened
to the US crypto business when all the export controls were brought in.
(A lot of damage was done in exchange for no demonstrable security benefit.)

Obviously, a market that big and moneyed isn't going to be ignored: how
can it be? But what used to be a no-brainer isn't so obvious anymore --
staying out of the US market is a serious option where it wasn't before,
and that just leads to further Balkanization.

It's fitting that an open source product like Asterisk is helping keep
the US in the game.

-Stephen-