[LINK] Is it unethical to infringe a patent?

[Deus Ex Machina]

Brendan Scott [brendansweb at optusnet.com.au] wrote:

> This is for all you knowingly-is-essential people: on the ethics of the issue, should people be required to take positive steps to find out whether they are infringing? ie: Is it unethical for someone to remain just ignorant? How about to be wilfully blind where there's a suggestion of infringement?


let me restate it this way. under buddhist ethics if you become aware
that a mass murderer is about to commit a mass murder and the only way you
can stop them is to kill the murderer then it is ethical to do so.

the act is still locally unethical, you killed someone, but at a higher
context it is ethical as you save many lives.

under buddhist thought, you still take a negative karma hit for the local act of
killing someone, which you dont escape. but you take many positive karma hits for
the higher context lives saved. the two levels dont cancel out. both will be played out.
however the negative act is justified by the superior positive act.

the questions of infringement in my mind become value tradeoffs. however
the law however doesnt generally care about value tradeoffs other then in
determining the scope of punishment.

an example is the case of a person racing someone to hospital being
stopped for speeding, the officer then leads the way. afterwards the
officer still books the man for speeding. supposedly thats the law.

its no different with patents.

Vic