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.
On Patents: They might serve that purpose but they are actually a grant of a property right. And if you will, the right of shoot to kill If I see you on my land, should you "choose" to trespass. My grandfather, who was a fisherman most all of his life, applied for a patent on an innovative invention of his (called it the ding-a-ling). He ran trout lines when fishing bayous, and floating lines when in lakes. His idea was forged from the mess that would occur when picking up the lines and allowing the hooks to entangle themselves within the string. Instead of using some of the costly devices that would let you slide each hook into a sort of hook closet on a rail trying to keep the stringer all nicely wound, he created thousands of little hook sheaths made with pieces of tube and drinking straws. Simply slide the hook into the tube then push the straw into place to secure the hook in. This way he could just throw the entire stringer into a bucket and hang the hooks on the edge. When re-running the lines he just had to find one end and run the line, un-sheath the hooks while baiting. Didn't hook himself nearly as often, he said. His patent was denied because of existing patents. Seeing as how he had spent a lifetime fishing(he was about 60 when he made the first bunch) without having ever seen such a thing I conclude that it had to be original, innovative, and the previous idea certainly wasn't in the wild. I'm on the fence when it comes to software patents. I certainly see an abuse > of patents right now. How about in the future? Gene patenting! Yay... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1013_051013_gene_patent.html FTA: "While this does not quite boil down to [the patent holders] owning our genes ? these rights exclude us from using our genes for those purposes that are covered in the patent," Perhaps we should shorten software patents to > something that works better Like 0. (But I certainly support the idea of a patent in most other realms.) Why should a clean room implementation of something similar be in the violation of such a property right? Why then when the patented device/idea isn't being manufactured, sold, or talked about? I suppose this lends to the defence of a clean room implementation but it I don't think it prevents the holder from wasting their(enemies?) time and resources. Patents are becoming the loaded weapons. 1) patent 2) wait 3) sue & Profit! Why should some patent government decide what is and isn't innovative? How could they even know? I don't think that a think tank like Google could do an accurate enough job. The way I see it patents serve to advance greed. Money is only worth what value we give it. IMHO time and knowledge are priceless. I think that we are causing wastes of time and promoting limits to knowledge by allowing today's scientists, educators, and craftsmen to burden their successors with monetary values on archaic theory, ideas, and tools. I don't like patents at all, I understand the reasoning behind them I simply think they are bad ideas. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://brlug.net/pipermail/general_brlug.net/attachments/20051014/2b0900f4/attachment.htm
