[LINK] OT? Re: Australian Patents

[Roger Clarke]

At 10:33 +1100 6/12/14, Frank O'Connor wrote:
>And as for experimental equipment ... well, suffice it to say that if ... Galileo's lenses ... had been patented/copyrighted then a hell of a lot of science and research would not have applied. 

A quibble:  

Galileo nicked the telescope from some Dutchmen.  

He was a serial nicker, standing on the shoulders of giants, doing interesting things, and cocking a snoot at convention - which was dangerous when 'the convention' was the Catholic Church, which was powerful and inclined to torture and/or burn people.

But, in any case, Frank's point is entirely valid.  

It was crucial that Galileo be free to point the Dutchmen's tube in a different direction.  Without that, the discovery that Saturn has moons would have been delayed.  

Given that the heliocentrism was one of the critical revolutions (so to speak) that undermined said conventions, intellectual progress was driven by Galileo's potentially patent-breaching actions.

[Caveat:  done quickly from memory, and my HPS readings go back 40 years.]

-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			             
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Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University