On 10/9/05, Dustin Puryear <dpuryear at usa.net> wrote: > > Patents and copyrights have different objectives. You can't really lump > both > into a single argument. Patents serve to expose trade secrets so that they > aren't lost if an inventor dies or a company goes belly-up and also > releasing new ideas into the wild after some set time, while copyrights > serve to deter, well, the ability to copy a given work.
It is ironic, no? The original intent of copyright in this country was to preserve the public's right to copy original works after giving the author an exclusive monopoly on that work for a set period of years (28), which of late has been growing in length (now 75 years after the death of the author). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright I'm on the fence when it comes to software patents. I certainly see an abuse > of patents right now. Perhaps we should shorten software patents to > something that works better with how fast the software industry moves, > such > as three years. There is also the problem that non-innovative ideas are > being patented, which seems to indicate that perhaps software patents are > indeed a bad idea. (But I certainly support the idea of a patent in most > other realms.) I like the idea of a shortened patent lifespan for software. One could certainly argue that this would motivate innovation in creating new technology, since a publisher of a patented piece of software would have to compete with others using its own technology after those three years. John -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://brlug.net/pipermail/general_brlug.net/attachments/20051010/a73d05b9/attachment.htm
