> if Henry Ford had the patent to the car, is Toyota in direct violation > of his patents?
Patents and copyright have almost nothing in common, so it's a bad idea to make patent analogies when discussing copyright. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html ) But to answer the question, nobody patents whole products such as "the car". Mr. Ford probably patented some ideas he had about engines or other features of his car design, but other car manufacturers could either buy a licence for his patent(s) or they could make their engine without using his ideas. Also, patents only last for 20 years, so Henry Ford's patented innovations are no longer patented. -- Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3 http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ GPLv3 and other work supported by http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [email protected] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Read the Guidelines: http://linux.org.ph/lists Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
