[Jewelry making - Article 00350] - Re: [Orchid] Argentium patent and patent application

[Trevor F]

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    I still believe this obsession over the hypothetical threat of the
    Argentium Silver diffusion bonding patent to be out of order. There
    are a variety of reasons including: 

    - the patent in question has been granted for several years now (US
    filed date: 1998, granted: 2001, earlier abroad) and absolutely no
    one has ever been hassled, harassed nor served "cease and desist"
    papers in that time on the basis of this patent's claims. Why would
    anyone assume they would be thusly harassed now? 

    - the AS patent holder has a variety of other patents in place
    concerning AS and those don't appear to bother anyone in the least.
    Again, think it through: the inventor wants you to buy AS and use
    it, not interfere with your work for whatever imagined reason. 

    - the only reason that the patent holder has contacted AS users has
    been to help them in their AS work. There is no reason whatsoever to
    believe that he's about to change that, especially given the time and
    effort he's invested in getting the alloy to market. 

    - there are many patents in place that describe various processes
    one uses on precious metals, soldering patents for instance. Does one
    assume then that precious metal artisans are about to receive "cease
    and desist" orders for soldering using whatever alloy happens to be
    named. No, of course not, one would only concern themselves if they
    tried to duplicate the named alloy and sell it as a solder. 

    - if the AS patent holder did not have such a patent in place it is
    very likely someone else would. The AS patent holder has a vested
    interest is seeing his alloy succeed in the market and is therefor
    very unlikely to do anything to impede it's process, such as
    harassing AS diffusion bonders. The hypothetical "other" person would
    have no such concern for the AS users health and happiness because
    all that person would have control over is the diffusion bonding
    process itself. In other words you'd be much more likely to be
    harassed for diffusion bonding if someone else held the patent for it
    that if the AS inventor holds it. One could go so far as to see his
    holding of the patent as a protection for all of us that might want
    to use diffusion bonding on AS: he's protecting our right to do so
    where someone else would just be in it to make a buck off diffusion
    bonders everywhere. 

    - it makes absolutely no sense that one would hold such a patent in
    order to harass diffusion bonders of the alloy. What does make sense
    is that the AS inventor is laying claim to the alloy's unique ability
    to diffusion bond easily in order to maintain control over products
    that might feature themselves as a diffusion _bonding_
    germanium-based alloy, not diffusion _bonded_ products. On the one
    hand you control the original product, on the other you control...
    what, a small handful of people who might want to do a little
    diffusion bonding? Again, it makes no sense. 

    - and finally there's the issue of qualifications. As Larry Feller
    recently put it: "My contract lawyer told me the the judges usually
    hate patent law because outside the patent system, almost know one
    fully understands it." Are we to believe that the non-professional
    patent commentators here on Orchid not only know the system better
    than the professionals but also know the legal reasons for having
    such a patent in place? I seriously doubt that. 

    The bottom line if you ask me is "what is this really about?" If
    it's to warn us about a potentially malicious patent then I'd say
    "thanks, but you're no expert on this, your fears seem a little
    unsubstantiated, and it doesn't really make much sense anyway." 

    If its purpose is to scare us off of using AS because of some
    completely hypothetical legal threat then I'd say pretty much the
    same again, not to mention being curious why one would want to do
    that. 

    And if the purpose is to raise public support against the perceived
    ills of a patent that was granted several years ago I'd say
    "shouldn't you be talking to a lawyer?" 

    For all of these reasons I respectfully suggest that this is a dead
    issue. In the face of all that we've seen over the course of this
    discussion I think it's not at all unreasonable to start questioning
    people's motives and agendas if this continues on. 

Cheers,
Trevor F.
in The City of Light
Visit TouchMetal.com at http://www.touchmetal.com
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