On Tuesday 11 October 2005 03:30 pm, Michael O'Keefe wrote: > >>>>I know you are trying to kill this endless thread but the > >>>>analogy I have always made about Intellectual Property > >>>>in general is that of Indans and White man. Some of us used to roam > >>>>around in perfect freedom then the White man > >>>>came with his laws, lawyers and barbed wire and now he > >>>>has cut up intellectual space into nice tidy little farms ... > >> > >>When was this "roam free, as free as the birds" period of IP ? > > > > Back in the 60's when I was a graduate student we talked > > freely of things we were working on. None of us had heard > > of NDA's or were particularly concerned with intellectual > > property rights ... granted we were just naive young folks, > > not corporate employees, but even in schools now these > > issues are big concerns. > > Was this becoz of : > > a) ignorance or indifference of the law (most students fall under this > category :) > b) few/no lawyers practicing IP protection law > c) there were no IP laws, and it truly was the wild west > > > -- > Michael O'Keefe
Not c) but while I am no historian of patents they simply were not a large part of our consciousness. So a) is a fact. Don't know about b). Here are some raw facts 1963 90,982 48,971 54% 2004 382,139 181,302 47% http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm In the 41 years since 1963 the number of patents applied for has increased 420%, the number granted by 370%. So in some sense patents are four times as important now as they were in the 60's. In addition the 60's were focused on issues of freedom and civil rights, not property rights. Speaking personally I have always found IP to be hugely artificial compared, for instance, to classical real property. But we live in an artificial world and IP is an abstraction, which for better or worse reflects that reality. I do not particularly enjoy it though. BobLQ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
