On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, Karsten M. Self wrote:
To the best of my knowledge, patent law is not uniform internationally, certainly not to the extent copyright law is. In the US, both patent and copyright are powers granted to, not obligations required of, Congress. There is prior precedent for lifting patent protections, usually as anti-trust settlements.
While I don't agree with most of the "anti-trust law" in general (another issue entirely), in order to have an anti-trust settlement, there would have been an anti-trust lawsuit. The company being stripped of its patents would have had a chance to defend itself. If the US begins arbitrarily lifting patent restrictions in order to steal from foreign companies, expect retaliation in kind. -MW-