I found this very well-written article about “the importance of IP in Australia” which was very level headed, but also gave a good warning about the issue of patents in a way the average Australian business might understand. It points at an incident 3 years ago that I hadn’t even heard of which will be good leverage should any of our community be threatened with patents. I repeat that the most important thing is to drag this issue into the light of the public eye, and keep it there. Only by airing it can the average person actually understand the depth of the problem and potentially do something about it. Blog, email, talk to your LUG or Linux Australia before the threat is put into contracts where you can’t ever mention it again.
‘All of a sudden organisations in the US were threatening to hold up goods on the wharves unless DET’s annual licence fees were paid, says Matthew Tutaki, now head of government IP advisory body Sanseman Government, who at the time led the campaign against DE Technologies. “Once you receive an infringement notice it becomes next to impossible to overturn the patent, even if you have “prior art”. You actually have to go to the High Court to challenge it. This can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees” he says.’
The article finishes with the suggestion that companies who understand how IP impacts them will be “solidly positioned”, which I translate as “will have some hope in hell”. I would counter by saying that a) it is very expensive and difficult to protect yourself from hostile IP action and b) even if you understand the issue, how would you change your business and would it do your business any good? There is a serious problem here and it is impacting Australian businesses _today_!. Until we realise that strong IP protections are not really useful when the “IP” market has already been monopolised and countries like Australia have very little chance of getting the upper hand (above the US in particular) then we are going to continue this dance of “leveraging IP can be good for you” and “how do you protect yourself”. At least the issue is getting better understood. Great coverage by ZDNet.