[ih] patents and public stewardship

Sun Feb 4 12:35:33 PST 2024

Looking at the world from the other end of the spectrum from the 
corporate/government...

Today, if an engineer invents something, and wants to make some money 
from that invention or even give it away for general public benefit, how 
would you accomplish that?

 From my admittedly anecdotal experience over about 2 years of patent 
battle, it seemed to me that the only way to participate in the patent 
system is to be a very large corporation, or at least an individual with 
deep pockets able to withstand the possible years or decades of battle 
in the system.

In addition, it seemed that there was no individual or organization 
inside "the system" that had any incentive to ever resolve a patent 
dispute, except of course the litigants.  Patent lawyers, judges, PTO 
examiners, experts, legal clerks, corporate patent departments, et al 
have job security as long as the battles rage on.

Getting back to internet history...

I was surprised when I discovered the networking patent that DCEC had 
secured, and arranged for it to be freely usable by anyone. Then it 
occurred to me that perhaps their work was part of some larger plan.  It 
meshed in nicely with other events of the day (1980s).  For example, 
NIST had created a TCP testing program, DoD had changed its procurement 
policies to require TCP to be implemented in all its relevant purchases, 
ARPA had spent considerable funds creating implementations of TCP and 
making them freely available and, unlike OSI, making all the related 
documentation free for public use.   DCA had orchestrated a complex 
migration of its installed base from Arpanet (NCP) to Internet (TCP).  
Probably there were other such actions that I don't remember or never 
knew about at the time.

Was all that effort across many different organizations planned and 
coordinated?

Governments are good at making plans, generating documents, and 
establishing policies.  Back in the 80s, there was a significant US 
program called "GOSIP", which I think stood for "Government OSI Plan".   
It laid out the plan for conversion of the US government communications 
from a melange of technologies, including the 'TCP Experiment", into a 
new communications architecture based on OSI.

That of course never happened.   TCP won.  But was there some "GIP", or 
"Government Internet Plan" that drove all of the decisions made within 
organizations such as ARPA, DoD, NIST, NSF, et al and acted as a "Plan 
B" to the GOSIP vision?  Or was all of that just coincidental decisions 
by various people inside parts of the US government?

There's a lot of historical record of the development of technology - 
protocols etc., but I haven't stumbled across much concerning the 
"people behind the curtain" making the Internet happen.   For example, 
was the DCEC effort to secure patents on some Internet-related 
technology a result of some DoD directive?   Or was it just that someone 
(Ed Cain?  Bob Lyons?) that just decided it was a good idea and did it 
"under the radar"?

Now that the Internet long ago grew beyond its role as a DoD Experiment, 
I wouldn't expect pieces of DoD (such as DCEC) to be responsible for 
"making the Internet happen".   It's a global and international task 
now.  But who inherited the role to make the Internet happen?

Jack Haverty

On 2/4/24 10:01, Vint Cerf via Internet-history wrote:
> Bob, the PTO supports non-profits like the National Science and Technology
> Medals Foundation so at least some of that income is being re-injected into
> worthy causes.
>
> v
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 4, 2024 at 12:47 PM Bob Purvy<bpurvy at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> Only one comment, which not everyone realizes:
>>
>> *" Santa Claus giving away free resources for public benefit, **
>>
>> The PTO runs at a huge profit, giving away (usually) worthless pieces of
>> paper. It's not allowed to keep that money and use it to improve patent
>> quality, hire more examiners, or do anything valuable. Instead, it just
>> flows straight to the Treasury.
>>
>> This is 10+ year old information, so it's possible it's out of date.
>>
>> *Finally, another reminder: There's a bill in the Senate
>> <https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/2140/text#:~:text=Introduced%20in%20Senate%20(06%2F22%2F2023)&text=To%20amend%20title%2035%2C%20United,eligibility%2C%20and%20for%20other%20purposes.>that
>> would undo the modest progress that CLS Bank v. Alice made towards getting
>> rid of software patents. Write your Senator and ask any Senate candidates
>> to oppose it.*
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 4, 2024 at 9:12 AM John Gilmore via Internet-history <
>> internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>
>>> The conflict of interest between public stewards of resources that
>>> should be public, versus the private self-interest of the people
>>> involved in that stewardship, is ancient and ongoing.  In the Internet
>>> community it is visible everywhere, from the IETF vs. vendors, to ISOC
>>> vs. foo.org users, to the ICANN's secretariat, lawyers, sinecure jobs,
>>> and junkets.  As well as in people trying to tilt the patent and
>>> copyright laws in courts and in Congress to favor themselves.  And in
>>> the operation of the US Congress itself.  Google spends billions to
>>> pitch itself so the public thinks of it as Santa Claus giving away free
>>> resources for public benefit, while making tens of billions for itself.
>>>
>>> What was that quote about if you like sausage, don't look inside a
>>> sausage factory?
>>>
>>> Tom Lehrer made great songs, and releasing them for the public domain in
>>> his later life was a good move that will help his legacy stay alive
>>> after he's gone.  The US copyright system used to do this automatically
>>> after 28 years, back when it was structured to benefit the public.
>>>
>>> Vint Cerf via Internet-history<internet-history at elists.isoc.org>  wrote:
>>>> Thanks Karl, that's helpful. I like your idea for ISOC - a service that
>>>> they could be compensated for doing.
>>> There are other places such as the Software Freedom Conservancy that
>>> hold patents and copyrights for free software projects that don't have
>>> their own nonprofit infrastructure.
>>>
>>> In general it's better to have dozens of such places.  If one place
>>> accumulates a critical mass of valuable intellectual property, it will
>>> end up attacked, perhaps sneakily, to obtain control of it and then use
>>> that monopoly to make money unjustly.  If there are dozens, and one
>>> becomes incompetent or self-interested, the whole world won't get
>>> affected, just a little corner of it.
>>>
>>>>                                        As you know, ISOC has a challenge
>>>> demonstrating the level of public support it has (the so-called IRS
>>> Public
>>>> Support Test) that requires it to show that at least 1/3 of its income
>>>> comes from a broad range of public sources. They can only count a
>>> fraction
>>>> of the PIR income as "public".
>>> The Internet Society used its pull with ICANN to get tens of millions of
>>> dollars a year for doing nothing (by getting the monopoly on .org).
>>> Various people have various opinions on whether that was a good thing.
>>> (I was on the ISOC Board a bit before that, and like many nonprofits,
>>> raising funding for ISOC was always a challenge, until then.)
>>>
>>> Hearing a complaint about how that large flow of money from overpriced
>>> .org domains makes it hard for them to stay a legal nonprofit (*) would
>>> be amusing, except for what happened in between.
>>>
>>> ISOC tried to sell that monopoly for a billion dollars to a
>>> private-equity player (in concert with a couple of high-level people who
>>> had bolted from the ICANN monopoly to make a killing for themselves).
>>> The only credible plan to make back the billion for the investor was to
>>> then jack up the prices of .org domains for every nonprofit in the
>>> world.  It took a large effort, led by people with .org domains
>>> (including EFF.org) who didn't want to suffer so ISOC could profit, to
>>> derail that plan.  Ultimately, self-interest scrutiny by the California
>>> attorney general's office that regulates nonprofits (including ICANN
>>> itself) borked the deal.  See:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Interest_Registry#Proposed_sale_of_the_Public_Interest_Registry
>>>
>>> If I had valuable intellectual property to preserve for the freedom
>>> and benefit of the Internet community, I would recommend choosing
>>> its steward wisely, rather than defaulting to giving it to ISOC.
>>>
>>>          John
>>>
>>> PS: (*) I'm on the board of ARDC.net, a small nonprofit which got a
>>> $100M windfall from the ham-radio 44/8.  We couldn't honestly claim at
>>> that point that the public was our source of support.  We became a
>>> private foundation rather than try to continue as a 501(c)(3) public
>>> charity.  ISOC could do the same.  Or, ISOC could price .org domains
>>> more cheaply, rather than raking off a big premium for its own
>>> self-interest, at which point the money flow from PIR would lessen.
>>> Once it was less than twice as much as what ISOC collects as general
>>> public support, their public-charity status would be secure.  Wouldn't
>>> that be a great outcome?
>>> --
>>> Internet-history mailing list
>>> Internet-history at elists.isoc.org
>>> https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>
>

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