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Technology Stocks : Lucent Technologies (LU) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ridi J who wrote (3608)	8/11/1998 10:17:00 PM
From: Curtis E. Bemis	Respond to of 21876

Yeah, and every car manufacturer has to pay Henry Ford for the right of putting an engine into a horsebuggy-- OR, was that Mercedes ? Yes, I also believe in patent rights and "true intellectual property" should be so protected.

To: Ridi J who wrote (3608)	8/11/1998 10:53:00 PM
From: Andrew	Respond to of 21876

<<From what I've read, LU (formerly Bell labs) holds the patent from back in the 1970s to the concept of converting analog voices into digital signals. Isn't this what "every company" is doing? Shouldn't they all be paying a license fee? >> No -- Patents from "back in the 70's have expired, i.e. Lucent no longer has a monopoly granted by the government on the patented technology. That's the whole point of the patent system -- a monopoly for a period in exchange for full disclosure of the technology. (Patents from earlier days expired 17 years after the issue date; a couple years ago the rules changed to expiry 20 years from the application date to harmonize with the rest of the world and to prevent abuses such as stretching out the time before a patent issued.)