pooling patents for progress and protection

[Rik van Riel]

On Mon, 30 Dec 2002, Peter Palfrader wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Dec 2002, Rik van Riel wrote:
>
> > 3) Each participant can use all of the patents in the pool for
> >    defensive purposes, when faced with a patent infringement lawsuit.
> >    I'm not yet sure what legal construction can be used to achieve this
> >    effect, but it is important that all the participants can rely on
> >    the whole patent pool to defend themselves against patent infringement,
> >    using the standard "but you're infringing on my patents, too" counter
> >    suit trick that almost always leads to a cross-licensing agreement.
>
> This would mean that every member would need the right to sublicense
> every patent from the pool.  As this can easily be abused I'm not sure
> his point is a good idea.
>
> (are there other defensive purposes besides cross licensing?)

The other purpose is an injunction, forbidding the other party from
shipping a product using the technology in question.

This means that the patent pool agreement only needs to give every
participant the ability to get an injunction on the use of technology
from the pool's patents by any third party that doesn't have the
rights to use the technology because of other agreements.

These injunctions function as a "mutually insured destruction"
sword of damocles, meaning that the patent pool participant doesn't
need to cross-license any patents, except maybe its own patents.

regards,

Rik
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