🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4656@cluster.cs.su.oz.au>, sps@email (Steven P. Skabrat) writes:
>For 99.99999% of the US population what is important is that when someone
>creates or invents something, the inventor can protect that creation
>through the legal process so that others don't steal the result of his
>ingenuity.

I suppose you mean that for someone who applies for a patent, it's
important for him to prevent others from independently discovering
something and using the results of their own work and also important
to make money by restricting the freedom of others by letting the
governments enforce an artificial monopoly for his product.

>This result gives people the incentive to create, invent,
>produce, etc.  Call it capitalistic greed, conservatism, whatever.

This incentive is a byproduct of the patent system, not the reason for
it.  I have no idea what would be "preserving the status quo"
(conservatism) about it, at least when applied to software patents it
seems to be it would be conservative to oppose software patents.

>But
>thats what the United States copyright and patent systems are based on.

No, it's based on the principle of advancing the state of scienses and
arts.  Patents are there to encourage publication of the results of
the inventions, not to create artificial monopolies which can be used
to make some companies profitable off everyone else's back.

//Jyrki