[R._K._Sparks]

re nasaman and Tagemet and patents

Sony Betamax and Microsoft Windows etc. have nothing to do with this argument. Sony built and marketed hundreds of millions of Betamax devices world wide and MS has sold jillions of their products. They in NO WAY have tried to keep them unavailable. They just wanted to profit from their own labor (well, kinda mostly, except that Bill wanted to patent everything that Xerox PARC ever did as well as his own stuff). The diff with Chevron was that they sued to REMOVE a product from the market. They weren't going to sell it themselves and they wanted no one else to either. They ordered Panasonic to cease making new EV size NiMH for new EVs and restricted other licensees to making cells only large enough to barely power an electric bicycle. They used their patent to stifle and suppress sales and use of NiMH because it threatened oil. Sony and MS used their patents to try and sell as many of their products to as many people as they possible could.

That is a truly fundamental difference in behaviour. That is what makes what Chevron did wrong. And that is what should be illegal. If Chevron/Cobasys had been pumping out large format NiMH for that last six years, and selling them on ebay and spreading them all over the planet with wild abandon, I would have no problem with them restricting other licensees.
But they acted to suppress and destroy an existing market and to suppress and delay an entire nascent industry. This is not what patents were created to promote. BTW, my understanding is that patent law is simple statute law. Those statutes can be ammended. Patents are not a constitutional right. This type of cr*p should never be allowed to happen again and a judge or jury can easily distinguish the diffence in behaviour between proper use of a patent and the type of intentional suppression that Chevron committed.

 

[Jim I]

Randall Sparks #139:

I understand your frustration with the situation, but I have to disagree with your conclusions.

The idea of a free market, is that if you own something, it is your right to do with it as you please.

Once you start down the path of "we know better to do with your property than you do", where does it stop? And Chevron did not kill EV development, it merely delayed it, as others decided to invent something better.

And judge and jury? Isn't that the same system that awarded millions of dollars to someone that spilled coffee in her lap while driving her car???? The last thing you really want is twelve people who were too stupid to get out of jury duty deciding something this important.........

In an open capitalist society sometimes you have to take the bad with the good.

JMHO

GO GM Volt Team!!!! Jim I - #1196 On The GM-Volt.com List

 

[R._K._Sparks]

Ah yes, Open Capitalist Society. They actually have one, in, of all places, China. Patents don't mean diddly squat. If you don't win in the marketplace, you don't win. The whole idea of patents is that they are a SPECIAL PROTECTION provided by the GOVT in exchange for being part of civil society. Total laissez faire capitalism has not patents. You "entrepreneurs" always want to have it both ways. You want the govt to protect you from your competitors, while telling us you got your wealth because you "earned" it. When you really got it from purchasing legislation.
You use the govt to create and protect your position while constantly bleating "get the govt out of my way". Total hypocrisy!!!!!

Yes, Chevron did only manage to delay the mass production of electric vehicles, by about 10 years or so. At a cost of somewhere around a trillion dollars to the American economy. If you did that to your neighbors or business associates, you would be in jail for a long time for a whole bucket load of felonies. It is time for businesses to have to follow the same laws as the rest of us.

Of course, if you want true open capitalism, we could just scrap this whole patent business entirely.

 

[staspeterson]

You are quite correct except for some attorneys like that ba$tid that tried to sue Algore into the Presidency, on technicalities, when he lost in the vote count? No one benefited in the Microsoft precedents, except him and and his cronies.
But I'm glad that ba$tids like him weren't around in the 1920s. The precedents they set are atrocious.

Or we would have to
1) Go a chassis builder like Fisher body for a chassis .
2) Go to engine builder like GM for a drive train
3) Go to Bendix for a Starter motor
$ Go to Libby for a windshield
5) Go to Sylvania for some headlights
8) Go to Exide for a Battery
9) Go to Monroe for some shock absorbers
10) Go to Champion for some spark plugs
Finally find some guy to put it all together for you.

Don't you feel "liberated" by David Boies
and the other ba$tids and shakedown artists, for the freedom they gave you, when you wanted a new car? And they only got about $300 million for that help. That's the law today.

 

[Jim I]

Randall #141:

Your post is more confusing than ever. Your quote:

"If you did that to your neighbors or business associates, you would be in jail for a long time for a whole bucket load of felonies. It is time for businesses to have to follow the same laws as the rest of us."

What felonies were committed? Chevron bought the patent rights from the owners who were paid in full. It was a completely legal transaction. They did not put a gun to the head of GM to force them to sell their property. What Chevron did with that purchase was up to them as the new owners. Since it would have affected their current business, they locked their newly purchased property up.

I am not saying I agree with how it turned out, but I do understand why it was done. And I certainly do not see anything illegal about it. The goal of a publicly traded company is to increase market share and produce a profit for the shareholders while complying with the laws in effect in that country. Business 101.

So what I get by your logic is that any property can and should be taken from the owner if the government deems it "for the public good"? I would like to see how you feel about that when your home happens to be in the path of the transmission lines and gas piplines that T. Boone Pickens wants the government to build, and they decide that you should just give it up for the good of the rest of the country!

Chevron played by the rules. If you do not like those rules, run for office and change them. But don't whine about the big bad businesses that should be playing more fairly. There is that word again. I will repeat myself here. Unfair does not mean illegal.

Personally, I think that Chevron made a huge mistake in not producing or licensing out that technology. You would have thought that they could have made hundreds of millions of dollars in adding a new business to their existing products. But who am I to tell the owners of another company how to run their operations, any more than I would want someone else to come into my company and do the same?

Unless you have started and run your own business, like I have for the past 28 years, it is very difficult for you to understand what it is like from the management point of view.

 

[doggydogworld]

Please everyone, stop with the BS about Chevron not licensing NIMH. ECD and ECD/Chevron JV Cobasys have licensed these patents to a dozen or so companies who are free to build EV-sized batteries everywhere except North America. None do. A couple licensees, including Toyota subsidiary PEVE, are also licensed to sell EV-sized batteries in North America. They don't. Automakers can also choose from non-infringing NIMH designs (e.g. Nilar). No one does. The problem with NIMH is price/performance, not patents.

The licensing information is disclosed in SEC filings for Cobasys parent company Energy Conversion Devices. Anyone who has not read these filings is simply spreading lies.

Final note: Cobasys is nearly bankrupt. You can buy the entire company, including patents, for a song. No one wants them because the technology is obselete. Lithium is winning, just as in cell phones, laptops, cordless tools, .......

 

[R._K._Sparks]

144 doggydogworld

You are correct about the current situation. No longer technically viable. But in 2002 they were "it" and they were in effective vehicles. Chevron intended and succeeded to stop their use where they were being used, North America.

143 Jim I

Chevron DID NOT break the law. They followed it and they won their arguments in a courtroom. My argument is that the law should be different. Do I think that govt "should" confiscate property for the public good? Well, that sounds like a bad idea, doesn't it. But we all pay taxes, or, at least, I pay mine. But patents are not "property" in the usual sense. They are an invention of govt, a license of a sort, created as a special protection to the inventor, under the premise that such licenses would promote more inventions which would have a net public benefit that would outweigh the "unfairness" of giving special protection to one entity. Read up on your history.

The taxes we pay to maintain the U.S. Navy so that they can keep the sea lanes open for international commerce are a subsidy to business. Taxes to maintain police forces to catch check fraud, burglary, etc. are a subsidy to business. Investment tax credits, business incubators, all manner of deductions and write-offs etc. Why do we do this? Because we need the products and services that commerce and business provide.
But you need us too. This is a two way street. We all live in the same world and the same society and we all have responsibilities to EVERYONE in that society, not just to shareholders and owners. That is the social contract that Chevron broke. But it was legal, which tells us that the law needs ammended to make such actions less likely and more difficult in the future.

Think a little about the golden rule. It isn't really about gold.

 

[Tagamet]

Randal Sparks@145
I can't decide whether your point of view is Socialist or Communist. Can you help me out?
Be well,
Tag

 

[Jim I]

Randall: I guess we are going to keep debating this for a while longer:

You asked me to read up on the history of patent law. So I did.

Here is a good site:

http://www.ladas.com/Patents/USPatentHistory.html

"The Constitutional basis for federal patent and copyright systems is to be found in the Constitution of the United States Article 1, Section 8, clause 8 which states:

Congress shall have power ... to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. "

So it had nothing to do with "social conscience", and everything with protecting the owner of the patent from potential infringers. As I read it, the interpretation of the law by the courts swings back and forth, depending on economic conditions. At some points, the courts will take a dislike to patents, and find them invalid upon appeal. At other times, they uphold them. So I guess if you want to be mad at anyone, you should be mad at the judge that upheld the Chevron patent in his court.....

Now as to tax law, I think it is ridiculous as currently implemented. Right now, the Congress uses it to give special favors to special interests and to try to legislate morality. I think that is just wrong. If you want a tax system that is truly equal, make it a straight prcentage of income for everyone, personal and business, with no exceptions. The tax form would be 5 lines long, instead of the 47 page personal return we filed this year. That way, there is no one that makes millions, and gets to be exempt from paying taxes through loopholes. But at the same time, I think the government should uphold it's responsibility to the citizens, and be forced to live within their financial limits. The fact that we have a ten trillion dollar deficit should give you much more fear than the fact that electric cars were delayed because Chevron decided not to license battery packs in North America..............

And as I said before. If you do not like the current laws, run for office and get them changed. Or if you want Chevron to open up those license agreements, start a campaign that will hurt them in their pocketbook. If enough people decide not to purchase their products, because of the way they do business, their business practices will be modified.

That is how real change occurs............

 

[Mike_Overturf]

This from a company that said 'we have no idea how to get past the 25 mpg requirement" that Congress put into place. Always the same story: seatbelts, safety glass, ABS? Impossible, it'll break us! 35 mpg? Pipe dream, can't be done! When will we learn to ignore their lobbyists?

 

[Jake]

Need AWD please...

 

[W.G.PEARCE]

WHY "SUV" we are a spoiled bunch of WACKOS... In Fla. or San Diego they are REALLY necessary..YEAH RIGHT.. Get real ....just how many really need a 4 wheel drive???? That's exactly why we are in this oil problem... Bill