They actually are like automobile ownership. You can "own" a patent just like you own a car. You can sell a patent, give it away, or otherwise dispose of it just like you can when you own a car. And just like when you transfer a car, there will be paperwork involved in transferring a patent.
By the way, patents are not necessarily a description of how to do something. They can also be a description of a thing or of a composition of matter.
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RE: Cross Licensing: My language was a bit sloppy, yours is a better description.
We actually don't disagree as much as this discussion might make it look it. I agree (for the most part) that the
patents themselves are are owned by their respective companies. That they can be traded, sold, given away... just like an automobile. As long as the chain of ownership is clear and undisputed (because so many patents are based on the work of other patents).... the analogy being that you hold clear title to the car, but perhaps the left rear wheel is partially owned by somebody else.
Where we disagree is how the patent is defined. I used processes, because for most part MS and Apple patents will overlap there - not the composition of a material.
Patents, in my analogy, are more like land ownership .... not automobile ownership. There is still no question that a company can buy and sell land, trade it, etc. However, the actual boundaries of the land often a bit fuzzy. I'm using the example of rural land, where the land survey was originally described, and not a lot of iron pins were planted.
So, the land survey says the boundary will be the middle of the channel of the stream. Easy and clear, and both neighbours agree to that. But when the land clearing starts it's noticed that since the land was originally surveyed the stream has cut a number of channels, and there are islands. Which channel do you use as the edge of the property? Or perhaps the description in the original survey for another side was from the middle of the road. The road as it existed then, or the road as it exists now? When these vague descriptions put a gold deposit on one property, or the other, then these boundaries can be tough to settle.
Patents are like that - imo. Ownership of the patent/land is not in dispute. It's just how the words of the patent are interpreted when two sides have $milliions at stake.
I was once visiting a kibbutz in the valley between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea. The international border between Jordan and Israel was defined as the deepest part of the channel of the dry stream bed that connected the two Seas. The kibbutz's farm land bordered on the international boundary. When they needed more land, they would go out at midnight and carve a new "channel" and move the border a little bit further east.
Or there was the case recently of the island in the Rio Grande that changed hands recently - between the US and Mexico - because a channel in the River was deemed to have been created artificially, and that the island was therefore on the other side of the natural channel of the Rio Grande, which defines that bit of the international border.