Re: [Patents] Intellectual Property is a Tool to Gain Central Control

[Hartmut Pilch <phm@a2e.de>]

> Interview - June 2003
> ?Intellectual Property is a Tool to Gain Central Control?
> Pit Schultz in Conversation with Sabine Breitsameter
>
> http://www.swr.de/swr2/audiohyperspace/engl_version/interview/schultz.html

We see here another attempt to delegitimate copyright by pointing to the
failures of patents.  See also Boldrine and Levine.  Such argumentation
obscures the problems.

Boldrine & Levine too argue the case for abolishing software copyright by
pointing to Bessen & Maskin's evidence on patents.

Even in much of the economic literature, people tend to look too little at
the scope of the actual exclusion rights which they are lumping together
into one statistical report.

One big stumbling block in public communication is that people usually do
not know what patents are and think of them as a kind of industrial
copyright.  Which in fact they should be but aren't.

I'm afraid we need more than ever to campaign *for* a right to exclusive
control of individual creations (and non-exclusivity of non-individual
elements), i.e. for a copyright-like unified IP system.

Supporting copyright does not mean supporting unbalanced legislation such
as the planned CEC/BSA/Fourtou IP enforcement directive.

A link on the latter is found in

        http://swpat.ffii.org/players/jfourtou/

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-18979927
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
145,000 votes 400 firms against software patents     http://noepatents.org/