[LINK] In other news....

[Stewart Fist]

Stig correctly says:
> 
> Hang on, let's separate the threads here...
> 
> One issue is whether there should be such a thing as "ownership" of this
> thing that's being called "intellectual property" and, if so, how it should
> work.

Patent principles are notoriously difficult to put into air-tight
legislation, which is why we still get claims that it is illegal to tape TV
shows for your own use, when the law was intended to stop the taping for
commercial exploitation (or to deprive the patent holder of his commercial
due).  But we all know that these trivial breaches of copyright are simply
ignored by the law.

And that's how it should be.


The earliest reasons for protecting patents, were purely for kings to grant
some economic advantage to one of his favorites.  But later a
rationalisation emerged in the law that said that intellectual property law
serves the purpose of encouraging innovation by giving those who make
discoveries some temporary ownership of their ideas in order to capitalise
on their work.

This seems to me to be an entirely appropriate, and equitable idea.
Especially since I make my living through the generation and expression of
ideas.

If such a law didn't exist, then I would send a laboriously written article
in to a newspaper, and the editor could say "Thank you very much" and
publish it without payment or with token payment only, and I'd have no
redress.  

There's always enough people wanting to get their names in print to fill the
pages of a newspaper with un-paid rubbish (that's what now fills the op-ed
pages of most newspapers these days), so the newspaper would never be short
of material from Tony Abbott or John Howard -- but it would lack material
from freelance and independent writers because no reliable market would ever
exist.

The Americans were the first to open up their patent law to the average
inventor (by lowering the cost), and so their law was better than other
countries until the 1900s.  It was a very smart move, and it made America
the country of innovation because everyone invented like mad for a couple of
centuries, while Europe stagnated.

However short expiry times also held off competetition for only a few years
-- which was also important in encouraging innovations.


But they didn't always get it right, and some of the problems we see today
are directly the result of recent American actions over patent laws:

€ The first problem they created in the 1800s was that they allowed a wider
interpretation of the patent laws than other countries.  The American legal
system gave Morse a patent over telegraphy rather than over his
printer-terminal, and it allowed Alexander Graham Bell to hold a patent over
the telephone, rather than over the particular design of the microphone and
earphone.  These too-broad patent laws effectively blocked innovation for
many years until the patent expired.

Later moves have extended the life-time of copyright and patents, and while
it may be justified in some case, it certainly is inhibiting developments in
others.

€ In the area of drugs, Big Pharma has reaped a bonanza from the ability to
spin out the expiry time of patents by minor changes. The Republicans
haven't acted to change this for fairly obvious reasons.

This obviously needs new legislation.

€ More recently, Bush and the Republicans have allowed patenting of
life-forms, which most of the world prohibited.  And this is the cause of
most of the recent intellectual property problems.

Because America took the lead, other countries followed in order to protect
their own biological researchers.

 We need to go back to the old idea that you can't patent life forms (even
though this has problems with definition)

€ Lastly, we've got to stop blanket patenting: where some large organisation
floods an area of research with dozens or hundreds of patents covering areas
where no one has yet conducted any real researched. (Just-in-case patents)

 The earliest legal principles of patent law insisted on model of the
invention being deposited at the Patent Office, to prove that it wasn't just
a plan or an idea, but was a practical machine.

Ssomething similar needs to be included in modern patent law to show that
research has been done, and results established -- so that the law isn't
being used by wealthy corporations to block research/innovation by others.

----

In all of these problem areas, the law can be fixed by international changes
to legislation.

We don't need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.


-- 
Stewart Fist, writer, journalist, film-maker
70 Middle Harbour Road, LINDFIELD, 2070, NSW, Australia
Ph +61 (2) 9416 7458