🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Aug29.203535.14840@sq.sq.com>, dak@sq.sq.com (David A Keldsen) writes:
|> Patents are not on thoughts.  Copyrights are not on thoughts.  These
|> protections are on the expression of thoughts.  The protection is on
|> "their respective Writings and Discoveries."  "Their" is a pretty clear
|> way of saying "property" isn't it?

This is silly.  When talking about children, I can refer to "their parents".
Does that mean that the parents are the property of the children?  Ideas
aren't property, and the founding fathers didn't think they were either,
so clearly they didn't mean to so state in the constitution (look
at the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin on the subject,
for example).

|> Since one of the alternatives is not to publish at all, the point of
|> patents is to assure inventors that they still can have the fruits of
|> their labors, while displaying the techniques involved so that they
|> are not lost, and so that they revert to the public domain after some
|> period of time.

Software is characterized by multiple independent re-invention.  Many of
the objectionable patents are for things that were invented by someone
else other than the inventor and repeatedly reinvented by others.

Sometimes the time just becomes right for something to be invented or
discovered.  When this happens, what you'll find is that many people
independently invent/discover it (example: non-Euclidean geometry).
Why should the one of those with the best legal department own the
discovery?

Patents can only be justified to the extent that they "promote progress
in science and useful arts".  It seems to me that the drug companies
could actually make such an argument, since the expensive research is
paid for by the subsequent monopoly: I couldn't morally propose eliminating
patents in that field without coming up with a substitute mechanism.

I can see absolutely no argument that software patents promote progress.
I can only see arguments going in the other direction.

--
Joe Buck
jbuck@galileo.berkeley.edu	 {uunet,ucbvax}!galileo.berkeley.edu!jbuck