🚀 go-pugleaf

rcain@netcom.com (Robert Cain) writes:
>: 
>: >Bob Cain    rcain at netcom.com   408-358-2007:
>: 
>: >The only thing that really sticks in my craw is the fact that all the
>: >work was funded by taxpayers.  This is a fundamental flaw in the system
>: >and we should be working to change that.  Any country's citizen should
>: >have unlimited rights to use any patent resulting from its government's
>: >funded work!  That could still be made law and should be.
>: 
>: Be careful what you ask for, you might get it. "UNLIMITED rights to
>: use" might result in no patent at all.

>I'm prety close to being ready to bite that bullet with publicly funded
>work.  Further consideration after my posting shows me many problems in
>determining just who exactly, when you begin considering corporations,
>should have those rights.

There is a balance between the recovery of "public money" and not
removing the incentive to comercialise an invention. Remember that the
public also gets money back ( thorugh taxes etc) when an invention is
successfully developed and sold. It's little different from having
provided you with with your education- should your salary  and all your
property from high
school on be put into the public pot because the public provided you
with the education to enable you to work? 
Some government contracts do put limits on what can be done with work
carried on under them ( Recall the huge fuss re SMP by Wolfram (of
Mathematica fame) which was deveoped under govt funds.)Why should RSA
try to develope and comerdialise their work if everything is to go into
the public domain anyway?