Re: ipr-wg was Proposal to cease accepting IPR disclosures by unstructured email

[Carsten Bormann <[e-mail]>]

On 19. Jul 2022, at 06:13, Martin J. Dürst <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Another deterrent may be that people or companies that are involved in a proposal in aWG and later "pull IPR out of their hat" will get remembered. They won't be allowed to pull the same stunt again.

Well, one time may be enough to fill the coffers…

Some of this discussion seems to assume that an “inventor” on a patent should know what the patent claims.
That is impossible in general for two reasons:
— large organizations run the patent process on autopilot after the inventor has done their initial contribution.  Whether the patent ultimately claims some specific technology is outside the control of the inventor.
— patent claims are written up in English (or equivalent).  Nobody understands what is said until a court makes determinations about that.  The inventor is not that court.  Worse, interpretations of patent holders (≠ inventor!) what their patents mean definitely do change over time, and it is the patent holder that exposes you to litigation risk; it may be utterly irrelevant whether the patent holder ultimately wins in court.

Impossible in general does not mean impossible in each specific case, so it is good to have rules that react to that possibility.
It is also important to remember that the patent process is not subject to the same kind of logic that we were taught as engineers.

Grüße, Carsten