On 7/23/07, Gautam John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1184576791631 > > A surge in patents that protect surgeries and other medical methods > has triggered numerous lawsuits in recent years, with inventors > fighting more vigorously than ever to protect their intellectual > property rights.
I cannot think of anything more immoral than patents on surgical procedures. This is what happens when the trend of commoditising and pricing knowledge goes too far. There are a couple of excellent books on this subject that I recommend: "Innovation and Its Discontents: How Our Broken Patent System is Endangering Innovation and Progress, and What to Do About It" by Harvard professors Adam B. Jaffe and Josh Lerner. A sample chapter of the book can be downloaded from: pup.princeton.edu/chapters/i7810.html and "Owning the Future: Staking Claims on the Knowledge Frontier" by Seth Schulman http://www.amazon.com/Owning-Future-Staking-Knowledge-Frontier/dp/0395841755 Schulman's recent book, "Unlocking The Sky: Glenn Hammond Curtiss and the Race to Invent the Airplane" also talks about the American penchant for litigation.* *http://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Sky-Hammond-Curtiss-Airplane/dp/0060196335 While I am not a lawyer, my work with open source and Red Hat got me involved in fighting against software patents and we were successful in removing the software patent clause removed in the Patent Amendment Act 2005. We are currently fighting a battle around open standards and there are companies that are trying to get half-baked proposals sanctified with the halo of open standards. More on that on my blog at www.osindia.blogspot.com What is common to all these efforts is that these are efforts to keep knowledge free (as in freedom) and eternal vigilance is the price to be paid for freedom. Venky * *
