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I don't see what this article has to do with doing
away with IC so much as with an abuse of such. i.e. "frivelous,
lucrative and dangerous". They didn't invent it so they don't
deserve the patent. If they get it, it means that they can rob
the common for a period of time just because they used the patent as a monopoly
device. But it doesn't follow logically that patents for
innovation over a period of time, are bad. Your logic is
flawed and self-serving of your case for your Master's version of the
world. I'm an artist and you are an economics
teacher. What's wrong here? How come I see this
and you treat it like a "Ray Harrell and Ray Jones have brown hair therefore
brown hair is a quality of everyone named Ray no matter what the last name
happens to be." I don't think your ideas about patents and his
ideas about frivelous, lucrative and dangerous are the same at all.
Ray Evans Harrell
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2002 4:56
AM
Subject: Fish and Chips
Hi!
I suppose everyone knows that I want to
see the end of both patents and copyrights - the source of privileges costing
us billions every year.
Someone else has similar
ideas!
Harry
----------------------------------------------------------------
Charity Applies for Ownership of
British "Fish and
Chips"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In
recent years it has become clear that many patents discourage innovation and
raise prices. Some corporations seek frivolous -- but very lucrative and
dangerous -- patents on all sorts of things. In response, here is a nonprofit
organization playing the same game, in order to show how unfair the current
monopolistic system
is.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
by
Daniel Nelson of OneWorld.net
An international charity is trying to
shock British consumers by applying for a patent on one half of the country's
favorite fast-food dish, fish and chips.
London-based ActionAid has teamed
up with food scientist Professor Leo Pyle, of Reading University in southeast
England, to create a brand of french-fried potato, known in Britain as chips,
which is "ready-salted."
The group yesterday filed an application for
registration of its "invention" with the British patents office.
ActionAid's legal advisers say that if the group's application is
successful it could win the right to license over 300 million servings of
chips sold commercially each year that have the same properties as the
ActionAid Chip, those with added salt.
"This is no joke," said
ActionAid spokeswoman Maya Vaughan. "We are able to make this claim under new
patent rules that allow companies to get exclusive rights over basic foods and
even nature itself, simply by adding something to it, or displaying it in a
way that has not been done before."
ActionAid's aim, however, is not
to make millions of dollars, but to dramatize some of the implications of
international patenting rules.
"Big business has taken out almost a
thousand patents on the major crops we depend on for our food supply including
rice, wheat, maize and soya," says Salil Shetty, the group's chief executive.
"Farmers in poor countries are faced with the prospect of having to
pay for the right to grow food that they have been growing for generations or
risk infringement of the patent. This is an outrage."
Six major
agrochemical corporations -- Aventis, Dow, Du Pont, Mitsui, Monsanto, and
Syngenta -- own 98 percent of the global market for genetically-modified crops
and 30 percent of the global seed market, according to ActionAid research.
ActionAid cites the case of Larry Proctor, president of a
Colorado-based seed company, who took some yellow-bean seeds home with him at
the end of a holiday in Mexico, decided that United States consumers might
appreciate their different color, and applied for and won an exclusive patent
on the seed in 1999.
The patent -- which made it unlawful for yellow
beans to be grown in the U.S. or imported without paying a royalty fee to the
patent holder -- meant that export earnings by Mexican farmers, who had been
growing and exporting yellow beans for generations, were threatened.
Reacting with alarm to the case, ActionAid decided to mount a campaign
to raise awareness in Britain about the social and economic costs of the
international patents system.
"We want to bring it home to the British
public that their food can be patented too," said ActionAid's food-trade
policy officer Ruchi Tripathi.
"If we get the license we could call on
chip-shop owners throughout the U.K. to pay us for allowing them to add salt
to their chips or risk infringement of our patent," according to the group.
******************************
Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
*******************************
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