Re: [Patents] Washington Times: Internet Patents Divide Industry

[Simo Sorce <simo.sorce@xsec.it>]

On Fri, 2003-08-08 at 00:45, Richard Stallman wrote:
>     Hartmut Pilch wrote:
>     Patents and copyright serve (or are supposed to serve) a common function
>     of preventing cheap imitation and encouraging originality in the 
> interest
>     of society.
> 
> Looking for similarities is a mistake, because the differences are
> much more important.  That's why the term "intellectual property"
> is so deeply harmful: it directs attention towards the similarities
> and away from the specifics.

I think it all depends on the Point of View.
Both Hartmut and Richard are right.

If you look at similarities in a way, you can say copyright and patents
should go toward a similar goal, and that could make the patent system
much more close to the copyright one (As it was intended originally with
the one invention/one product idea of the patent system).

On the other side if you common those system to go in the opposite
direction so that to make the copyright system much broader (like with
the introduction of copyright on interfaces) than it may be a harmful
thing.

I generally avoid the term Intellectual Property when speaking to
"normal" people because I feel the meaning is easily confused with
property (like in physical objects property) over ideas, however in the
way Hartmut see it it is a very tempting idea, coupling the 2 concepts
to go more toward a copyright model for IP rather them a patent model is
a very smart social hack imho, and could more easily undermine patent
threats.

Simo.


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