Patent Attorney's Counsel ... We Be FINE

[Gianotorio at pilgrimhouse.com]

Hey maties. (the rest of you woosies, I'm not even talkin to anymore)

I just got off the phone with a conference call between my lawyer, a
patent lawyer he hooked us up with, and me of course.

Here's what counsel had to say:

(1) First, and foremost, they took me through the "let's talk about this
as laymen" sorta thing where they explained the PURPOSE of the way the
patent system protection works. And as I said meself a couple days ago,
the whole idea is BOTH to provide protection AND stimulate exposure of
the ideas to those "skilled in the art" who can review the patent,
understand it's workings, and EXTEND the art from there, whilst giving
credit and property protection to the patent holder.

(2) Consequently, ONLY under the most "special circumstances" of cases,
will the courts hold you an infringer if you build or use for study,
research, or review purposes, the work disclosed in the patent. Here are
the examples he gave. The prohibitions against "build, use, or sell"
'ing of the work refer to (a) "build", as in build it into some larger
work, and (b) use, as in use it in your mfg. plant or the normal course
of business, and (c) well, that part is obvious. But he knew of NO cases
where a patent holder ever even ALLEGED infringement in cases where the
device was constructed for the purpose of research in the art. He
considered that would be a "laughable" case if brought before a judge.
That's because of the next thing he explained.

(3) Since the patent system is DESIGNED to promote the piggybacking of
patents on top of each other, one making use of previous ones in
extending the art, it is OBVIOUS that the construction of models of a
work in the art, in a particular patent, for the purposes of
investigation and improvement in the art, is ALLOWED/ASSUMED to NOT be
part of the "build" prohibition. Otherwise, how could the art be
advanced!! This is the part I find MOST obvious, even to some idiot that
want's to try to use the patent protection system as if it were there
own private weapon. But I digress.

(4) They also said, without me even mentioning it, that IF you OWN one
of these patented devices, then you are FREE to do anything with it you
want, including measure it, take it apart, disclose measurements in
public (as long as you intend no malice by such disclosure). So I said,
well actually the technology we're studying in the patents IS
commercially available and I DO own a copy, then they said by that
ownership you have a license to use the patented device and inspect it
to your heart's content, and for review purposes, to disclose that
information to ANYONE, ANYHOW, as long as no malice is intended thereby.

(5) Lastly, as I introduced the questions about what if any restrictions
there would be to taking apart/dismantling one of these thingees I own,
I said, "well, what I'm getting at is, just exactly when does the
Reverse Engineering thing come into play". And the patent attorney
chuckled for a moment, and said, "Well, reverse engineering is
considered a PROPER activity! [HAH!] "This a widespread lay
misconception, that there's anything wrong with reverse engineering.
It's what you DO with the information that may cause infringement". It's
just that regardless of HOW you find out what's inside, and THAT you ARE
free to do, you still can't use the information like it's now your own,
as if digging it out of epoxy gave you some intellectual property rights
to it, as a reward for your "hard work". Hee.

So bottom line is that not only is the ION study work completely
acceptable and even ASSUMED by the patent system, BUT also the work that
Dr. Pelican and company are doing in "reverse engineering" (heh, now I'm
gonna PARADE the term proudly) them GM ECMs and making any merry changes
and tweaks they want. Cuz they OWN one, so they can do any bloody thing
they want with them, including back out all the code, and do brain
surgery. You just can't SELL the information as if it belonged to you.

But in all these cases, what we CAN'T do, and of course have been saying
all along we WOULDN'T be doing, is "build them into other things which
we then use in a commercial sense or offer for sale".

Now, one last thing about EGOR first and then a sidelight on ION, too.
First, EGOR is different, and I've had some prior discussions with my
attorney, which were cemented by the patent attorney. Since EGOR's
design was NOT obtained by reverse-engineering (and comparing it's
*outputs* to other devices does NOT qualify as rev-eng, BTW; I asked),
it IS my intellectual property, and I CAN "build, use, sell" it EVEN IN
A COMMERCIAL SENSE as I please. If I want to protect that exclusive
right, I need to either patent it or keep it "trade secret". I have no
intentions of keeping it a secret, as I said before, but I AM perfectly
within my rights to decide WHO I give permission to build one to.

Finally, about ION for commercial purposes. The patent attorney's
suggestion to me was, "study prior art all you want, but if you intend
to contribute to the art, you must either CITE the Saab patent, and
obtain a cross-license to use their patent in yours, if you can (and
this is routinely granted, apparently, since now Saab has the safety of
not worrying about infringing on your extension of the art), OR,
distance your work from theirs". So this just reinforced what I said
when this started, that we can play with this technology all we want,
but if anyone tries to "build, use, sell" in a commercial sense any of
them, they're suddenly treading on ground this project had/has no
intention of invading. If I want to make ION a commercially "ownable"
design of my own, I can't use any of the Saab stuff (or anyone else's
patented circuitry, for that matter).

Garfield Willis

P.S. We also discussed Robert's innuendos and possibly actionable
allegations, but that's ANOTHER thread entirely. Things I would perhaps
like to pass along to the good guys in this group, so they'd know their
rigths when some puke like this tries that the next time. I will
entertain suggestions on whether you'd like to hear that on-list or not.
I will NOT be taking private email requests for the discussion
individually; I don't have time. These kinds of litigious issues often
crop up in public lists, and it might be both appropo and useful to
discuss it in public. But we'll see what the woosies' hueNcry is like
before I do that.